SEEN FROM THE TRAIN.

Thames Star, Volume LIX, Issue 16644, 14 November 1925, Page 7

SEEN FROM THE TRAIN.

DRAMAS THROUGH RAILWAY CARRIAGE WINDOWS. Railway passengers sometimes get passing glimpses of extraordinary little dramas. Two men travelling in a train that was passing by a North Wales river, recently, saw something in the water that excited their suspicion. They stopped the train, and what the men saw, proved to be the body of a lady who had been missing for over a week. Several search parties had failed to find her, and if it had not been for the chance observation of these passengers, the mystery of her disappearance might never have been solved. On numerous occasions lives hav«. been saved by observant railway passengers.

Two business men, travelling by train between Selby and Howden, say in a field, near the line, a bull attacking a boy. They hurriedly scribbled notes tel mg of what they had seen ,and threw them out of the window as the train passed level crossings, hoping that someone might pick them up and go to the rescue.

At the first stop, to make sure, the staff at the station nearest the scene of attack were telephoned. After an exciting rush to the rescue, the bull was 'driven off and'the boy’s life saved, although he was severly mauled. In another case, -a farm-labourer, who had been kicked by a nurse and lay helpless with a broken .eg in a frost-bound field, might have died from exposure if his plight had not been noticed by a traveller in a passing train. Information was given at the next stopping point, and assistance was sent to the injured man from the nearest station.

A novel rescue, straight from the train, was made by a railway fireman near Birmingham. From tho footplate of his engine he noticed a man struggling in a dangerous whirlpool formed at the junction of two riv.ers. The fireman jumped from his engine and dived into the water, fully dressed. He succeeded in getting the man out, who was then unconscious, and revived him by artificial respiration.

Th.en he went back to his engine and carried on! A somewhat similar rescue was carried out by a heroic railway passenger only a short time ago. He was in a Manchester surburban train and, happening to look out of the window as the train passed by a canal, he noticed a boy struggling in the water. At the next station, he alighted and sprinted down the line to the canal where the boy was drowning. He dived in fully clothed and brought the youngster out, unconscious. As soon as the boy was restored to consciousness, his rescuer took the next train without waiting to dry his clothes. Two holiday makers, last season, might have been drowned if their plight had not been noticed from a passing' train.

They were a man and his little daughter who got into difficulties while paddling in the sea. The driver of a train that was passing by raised the alarm, and the two were rescued.

But looking out of the train has led to many more different things than life saving. The writer once attended a wedding that was the direct result of an impetuous young man looking out of his railway carriage window. The train he was travelling on was passing slowly through a wayside station when the youth noticed an acquaintance of his standing on the platform and talking with a very pretty girl. He was so taken with her looks that he got out at the next stop and took the next train back, the train for which his acquaintance and the girl were waiting. At the wayside station, he joined the two and got an introduction to the girl. It was not very long after that the two became engaged ~and .eventually married. An elderly couple are now happily settled in a charming house which they would never have posessed had it not been for looking out of the train. They were travelling on a certain railway route for thy first time, and happened to look out of the window simultaneously as a beautiful oldworld house came into view. Each agreed that it was the house of their dreams and where they would like to settle if “tlieir ship came home.” Only a little time later, the husband come into a modest unexpected fortune, and the couple’s first act was to seek out the owner of the house they had noticed, and purchase it, from him.