FREIGHT TRAIN MISHAP

Southland Times, Issue 20226, 11 July 1927, Page 2

FREIGHT TRAIN MISHAP

DEATH OF SEVEN MEN. SEVERAL HORSES KILLED. Toronto, May 21. The largest shipment of thoroughbred horses ever sent from England to Canada met terrible disaster in the wreck of a freight train near Hornepayne in the wilderness of Northern Ontario on April 19. Owing to the inaccessibility of the district full particulars have only just been learned. Seven men also were killed in the wreck, four of them being trainmen, and the other Captain William Richard Lidington, who, with his father, had made the shipment, Messrs Garnett Bull, a famous English amateur jockey who acted as trainer, and Herbert Henry Endersley, a groom. The shipment came from the Lidington Stud at Thame, England, the same stud which provided the bloodstock for the Prince of Wales’ Alberta ranch. When the shipment reached Ottawa it was detrained for a few days, and there some of the horses were purchased and thus escaped the fate of most of the shipment. Mr. C. A. Saportas, of Malvern, Pennsylvania, secured seven of the animals, and Canadian breeders a few more. The three palace cars in which the horses were transhipped from New York were still, however, almost full when disaster overtook the train at Hornepayne. “Dinkie,” one of the horses to be killed, created a sensation in 1924 by winning the Royal Hunt Cup at 50 to 1, beating the King’s horse, Weathervane. Other horses of note included Longtown, Galician, St. Barnabright, and a number of others either famous in their own names or by reason of their close relatives.