VICTORIAN RAILWAY DISASTER.

Southland Times, Issue 12120, 28 April 1908, Page 2

VICTORIAN RAILWAY DISASTER.

REPORTS BY YESTERDAY’S MAIL, UNNERVING SPECTACLES. A HEARTRENDING TRAGEDY. MARVELLOUS HEROISM AND STOICISM. (Prom Melbourne Age and Argus). Piles of the Melbourne Age and Argus to hand yesterday shows that the cabled messages, graphic though they were, gave but a faint idea of one of the most appalling catastrophies in the history of railways. The morning after the accident each of the papers mentioned had some six columns of particulars, These accounts were followed on the next day by illustrated reports covering fully 20 columns in each newspaper. The narrative abounds in pictures painted with all the realism of which the pen in the hands of masters of description is callable. What is given below, as taken from these reports,’ imperfectly pourtrays scenes in which human emotions and passions were stirred to a depth that can hardly be imagined by any who were not involved in this awful calamity.

SPECTATORS OF COLLISION. OVERPOWERED BY HORROR. The approach of death was not entirely unobserved. Looking out from a carriage window a number of young girls aboard the -Ballarat train beard the rattle, and saw the engine sparks of the Bendigo special tearing down upon them through the partial darkness and threatening immediate annihilation. They tried the door. To their dismay it was lockea. This paralysing spectacle was shared by another, A woman who stood upon the Braybrook platform caught a glimpse of the rushing locomotives when they were still distant a few chains. 'Distraught with horror she buried her face in her hands and reeled into the station building to hide from the approaching calamity—to blot the contemplation of its unnerving terrors from iter stricken senses. The impact came with the suddenness of a clap of thunder. The first of the great AA locomotives in front of the Bendigo special crashed through the rear carriages of the Ballarat train as easily as if the thick, rigid iron and wood work were brittle as egg shells. To Hie few who stood, appalled and paralysed with fear, and watched its death dealing progress the monster still seemed to bo ploughing onward moments after the collision. First one carriage, then a second, then a third and then a fourth were smashed, tossed off Hie rails, and pulverised - under its tons of tool and its pitiless wheels. At every foot on its onward course the life was crushed out ol .some poor holiday maker or a broken, mangled body was angrily tossed aside in Us last agony.