FEARFUL CROSSING TRAGEDY

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11472, 17 June 1930, Page 5

FEARFUL CROSSING TRAGEDY

FOUR NURSES KILLED ALSO ENGINE-DRIVER AND CHAUFFEUR. Electric Telegraph—Press Association CHRISTCHURCH, Last Night. Four nurses, the driver of the car and the engine-driver were killed almost instantly when at 5.23 o’clock this evening the 5.10 p.m. workers’ train from Islington smashed into a five-seater Government motor-car at Sockburn level crossing. The engine, with six waggons, was derailed. The dead are: Matron Isabella Duncan Brand, aged about 40, single, Matron at the Templeton Farm Colony, a branch of the Sunnyside Mental Hospital. Nurse Mary Cameron. Nurse Jane Field Palmer. Nurse Isabel Dorothy Bensell. i'lie three nurses were all single and in their early twenties and were employed at the Farm Colony. Ralph Augustus Smith, aged 20 years, single, motor-car driver, employed by the Sjunnyside Mental Hospital. Charles Waterloo Smitt, aged 59 years, married, an engine-driver, employed by the New Zealand Government Railways. The fireman on the train, Frank Carson, of 82 Ollivier’s Road, Christchurch, was thrown clear of the engine and taken immediately to hospital suffering from scalds and shock. The four nurses, who had been spending their day’s leave in Christchurch , were returning with the driver in a five-seater open car. Evidently Ralph Smith, who was travelling at about 20 miles an hour, saw the crossing-keeper’s lamp too late, for he swerved to the left in a last attempt to' avoid the engine. The car was caught in the middle and carried to the cattle stop, where catching in the wooden beams, it gave sufficient resistance to lift the engine off the rails and telescope six or seven waggons, plunging the whole in a piled mass of wreckage across the rails and on the embankment about 20 yards further on. The engine buried itself in the ground with a hiss of escaping steam and in five minutes the leading waggons were aflame. The four nurses and the driver were thrown out of the car on the far side of the crossing where all were badly mutilated. They died within two minutes. The engine-driver was pinned under the locomotive and killed. Piled up 20 feet into the air the wreckage of the telescoped sheep trucks and waggon under which the car was shapelessly held caught fire rapidly and showed the horror and tragedy of the accident. The engine, which was travelling tender first was almost completely turned about, facing the way it came. Wreckage of wood and iron bulged out over the far set of rails and underneath was the car twisted and torn and ripped until it was hardly recognisable. Firemen worked feverishly under Superintendent Warner’3 direction to recover the driver’s body. At length water was obtained from the abbatoir and with this the fire was thoroughly extinguished. Sections of the car, the steering wheel, seats and pieces of the equipment were strewn down the whole length of the track. Such was the tangle and confusion that it was impossible to separate truck from truck. The whole lay in one heaped mass to the right of the engine and behind it. TRAIN PASSENGERS* ESCAPE. CHRISTCHURCH, Last Night. Most fortunately the carriages were at the back of the train, according to custom, and the passengers felt only a minor shock. The train left Islington to time at 5.19 p.m. and was at Hornby at 5.15 p.m. A passenger in the first carriage (Mr R. Anderson) leaped out on to the siding when he felt the jolt and saw the driver of the car just as he died. He too helped in the violent effort to dig out the engine-driver while he still breathed. In about 10' minutes the Fire Brigade’s engine had arrived, but there was a long delay before sufficient water could he obtained to give a hose any force. Then the fire was quickly overcome. Most of the men were still trying to dig out the driver. They uncovered his arm and his head, but could do nothing more until the wreckage was lilted. The ambulance was also quickly on hand and in about 25 minutes the bodies were taken to the morgue at the Christchurch hospital, where they were identified bv Dr. A. V. McKillop, superintendent of the Sunnyside Mental Hospital. The crossing keeper, Henry McGrath, stated that just before the accident he was out on the road on the Christchurch side of the crossing. He saw a car approaching at a speed he estimated as from 15 to 20 miles an hour. “When he was quite close.” said Mr McGrath, “only a few yards away he must have seen either my light or the engine for lie swerved suddenly to the left apparently in an effort to avoid the engine, but he was too late and the engine got the car right in the middle. 'l’he engine seemed to rear up a little and it and the first six or seven trucks plunged to the left of tlie track and piled up in a heap. The next eight or nine trucks sway-

ed a little but did not leave the line and the back part of the train seemed hardly to be affected at all.”

“The woman they pulled out was just about dead when I came round,” said Mr R. Grubb, a driver on Laugesen and Company’s Templeton ’bus service. “Three of the women and the driver must have been killed instantaneously, but the fourth woman was still alive for a few moments. The car was under the fourth truck.”

Dir Grubb, who drives regularly over the crossing, describes it as one of the most dangerous he lias ever known. The lightmg is quite insufficient, lie said, and the fact that the line passes over tlie road at an angle makes the approach even more dangerous. The shining of a green light no bigger than a bicycle lamp was perhaps all right for the enginedriver, but it was very misleading to motor-car drivers who thought particularly if they were not accustomed to driving in town that it was the “all clear” signal. A fleet of 10 taxis and four motor lorries was commandeered to transship the 150 passengers on to the express from the south from Hornby to Islington, where they were taken on another train.