RAILWAY CRASH.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20510, 11 January 1935, Page 1

RAILWAY CRASH.

Train Drops Through Culvert. (Special to the “ Star.”) HOBART, January 2. A twelve-year-old Melbourne girl named Sheila Lyons was killed, and six persons, including the brother of the dead girl, were injured on the north-west coast of Tasmania last * Friday, when a train travelling from Burnie to Wynyard crashed through a culvert. The culvert had been partially washed away by heavy rain, v, hich had fallen incessantly for some days. Few people were travelling on the train; otherwise, it is stated, the death-roll would have been considerable. The engine toppled on its side and the tender plunged into a ditch. A composite car, carrying passengers, crashed heavily on its side. Two or three compartments of the secondclass carriage were smashed to pieces. The train was near Doctor’s Rocks, about four miles on the Burnie side of Wynyard, where the culvert had been partially washed away. The locomotive was half-way over the culvert when it collapsed. and the tender dropped into a ditch beneath. The engine toppled on to its side, and the driver, G. H. Parkin, and the fireman, j J. M. Medcraft, each had remarkable i escapes, suffering only a shaking. Behind the tender was a covered waggon loaded with miscellaneous goods. This was broken to pieces by the impact. Following this waggon was a composite car, carrying first and second-class passengers, and that also j crashed heavily on its side and was greatly damaged. The second-class car, which was attached to the rear of the composite car, remained on the lines until it reached the culvert. Then it plunged with a splintering crash, reducing the first two or three compartments to matchwood. The guard’s van at the end of the train was not damaged, and the guard, Mr Stephens, escaped injury. Road service cars were obtained immediately to take injured persons to the hospital. Culvert Collapses. Mr Charles Ward, of Smithton, who was driving the afternoon service car from Burnie to Smithton, was an eyewitness of the disaster. lie told a graphic story of the accident. “While I was talking to four men from New South Wales,” Mr Ward said, “ the train from Burnie came round the corner of Doctor’s Rocks toward the culvert! Suddenly there was a crash, and the train was off the line. The engine rolled to one side and the carriages to the other. “ When the engine passed over the culvert the culvert appeared to be still intact, but it had apparently been undermined, and it collapsed under the weight of the train. While the four visitors dashed to the wreck, I tore to Wynyard at more than sixty miles an hour to get the police, doctors and others.”

Describing the actual crash, Mr Ward said that, as it was passing oyer the culvert, the front of the engine seemed to dip and then suddenly went straight up in the air. The carriages telescoped with a crash of splintering woodwork, and rolled to the left into the torrent of wateij which was pouring through the culvert. This was the most serious railway' accident that has occurred in Tasmania since the express from Hobart to Launceston was wrecked near Campania in 1916.