Driver Saves Train Passengers From Disaster

Taranaki Daily News, 23 February 1935, Page 15 (Supplement)

Driver Saves Train Passengers From Disaster

CREW, BLINDED BY STEAM, FORCED OFF FOOTPLATE OF EXPRESS

PASSENGERS in the famous X Comet express from Euston to Manchester and Liverpool on a recent afternoon owe their lives to the tenacious courage of driver Samuel Ernest Linley. * They little knew that before the train came to a standstill at Welton, five and a half miles on the London side of Rugby, the driver and his fireman, Frank Wood, had been driven off the footplate by scalding water and steam pouring from a valve which had blown out while the train was travelling northwards at 55 miles an hour. For more than three miles these two men clung with scalded hands to the cabin rail while they stood on the narrow steps leading off the footplate of the firemen’s side of the engine. \ / Blinded by the steam, which obscured all his controls, and scalded by the gush of boiling water, driver Linley had twice made ineffective attempts to stop the train by closing the steam regulator. Each time he was driven back to the steps. . . Some miles from Welton signal box he made a further desperate and successful attempt to save the train. Regaining the steam-clouded footplate he forced his way back to his side of the cabin, and groping among the controls blindly clutched at the vacuum brake. Driver’s First Thought. He hastily swung it over and flung himself back to the safety of the steps and clung there in great pain until the train came to a standstill, a quarter of a mile farther on. Then having assured the safety of passengers, in the crowded train —15 carriages long —he dropped to the ground. The skin was scalded from his hand and forearm. His first thought was for the protection of his train. He sent fireman Wood to warn, the signalman at Welton box, while the guard ran 500yds back along the line to lay fog signals to warn oncoming traffic.

Driver Linley, having seen the damaged engine taken into a siding, was conveyed in an ambulance to Rugby Hospital for treatment, and fireman Wood, who had a scalded wrist, was given first-aid treatment at Welton. Hour’s Delay. The train was delayed for more than an hour while a relief engine was sent from Rugby with a fresh driver and fireman, and eventually, after further delays, the Comet reached Manchester more than two and half hours late. A “Daily Mail” reporter who saw driver Linley at his home in Upper Plymouth Grove, Longsight, Manchester, on his return last night, found him with one hand and arm bandaged. This was his story: “We were just entering the uphill stretch outside Welton when I heard something go near the firebox. The next moment a stream of hot water came splashing out, and the whole cabin became unbearable with scalding steam. “I tried to shut off the regulator, but found it impossible to get anywhere near it. “I made two attempts, but it was impossible to stay on the footplate. The fireman ana I both clung together on the steps on his side of the engine. On this class of engine there is no other foothold outside the cabin. “All the time I was thinking that I had to pull up the .train, or something awful might happen. “I realised that all I could do to stop the train would be to put on the vacuum brake, so I struggled through the steam back to my side of the footplate. Boiling water spurted up all over my legs and hands, but something had to be done, and I got through to the brake.” Mr Linley has been driving since 1911, and has driven famous expresses from Euston in the last two years.