TRAGIC RAILWAY ACCIDENT

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 16877, 26 October 1920, Page 3

TRAGIC RAILWAY ACCIDENT

EXTRAORDINARY FEATURES. SYDNEY, Sept. 29. A most extraordinary accident, resulting in the, death of an engine-driver and fireman, occurred on one of the New South Wales lines on Saturday night. Tho Railway Commissioners describe it as one of the strangest accidents which has occurred in their jurisdiction, and they have ordered a searching inquiry. The train concerned was a goods, and the only persons carried were the train crew —two enginemen and a guard The train arrived at a place called Binalong at 7.40 p.m., where the driver was obliged to make some small repairs under his engine. He found that a pin had been lost from the fixtures which connect the engine proper with the tender, and he reported the matter. He made a temporary repair, and the run was continued.

A few miles further on. while the train was on the flat,, the engine quite suddenly parted from the tender. The sudden cessation of the strain caused it to leap forward. The fireman and driver, taken unawares, fell backwards off the engine on to the track. The fireman fell right across the rails, and the train of following close behind, ran across his body almost instantly. The driver did not fall so directly in front of the following train, hut one of the wheels caught him, and he was cruelly injured. The engine ran on alone. The train slowed down. The guard, alarmed, saw the engine going on alone, felt the hump as the trucks passed over the fireman’s body, and ho applied the hand-brake. The train stopped, and he went back with a lantern. Ho found the fireman’s body first, terribly mutilated. Twenty-five yards further on ho found the driver, fearfully injured, and he died a few minutes later. The guard raised an alarm, and assistance Was quickly forthcoming from Binalong. Meanwhile, the engine ran on under its own power, but very slowly. The crew of a waiting train in the next station watched with amazement as it came wheezing in towards them. They guessed something was wrong, ran out and met it, found no one aboard, and managed to stop it before it collided With anything. Meanwhile, railwaynien are trying to find out why the tender parted from the engine. It is pointed out that even if the driver’s temporary repair did not hold, there were other tilings there which should easily have held the tender and engine together*