RUNAWAY TRUCKS

Taranaki Daily News, 26 April 1932, Page 5

RUNAWAY TRUCKS

EIGHTY MILES AN HOUR.

WRECKED AT A STATION. Eighteen loaded trucks and a brake van broke away from a shunting goods train at Belalie North, 161 miles from Adelaide, eafly one morning recently, dashed at a speed of about SO miles an hour on a down-grade for 16 miles, to Caltowie, and were wrecked. There was nobody on board the trucks. Starting slowly, the trucks covered the distance between Belalie North and Caltowie in 20 minutes. They swept through Jamestown railway yard, eight miles from the starting point, at more than SO miles an hour. There the four rear trucks jumped the rails in front of the stationmaster’s house, and were completely wrecked, but the brake van and the remaining trucks continued toward Caltowie. Meanwhile Belalie North had informed the control office at Peterborough of the breakaway, and instructions had been sent to Caltowie to stop the trucks there. This was necessary, because the line is on a down-grade all the way to Port Pirie. , A heap of sleepers was built up on the line in the Caltowie station yard and, when the trucks struck this, they piled up and were derailed, throwing coal and superphosphate all over the yard. Men were rushed from Port Pirie and ' Peterborough, and the line was cleared by 10 a.m. Between Belalie North and Jamestown there is a drop of 529 feet in eight miles.