TRAINS COLLIDE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 14, 17 January 1936, Page 7

TRAINS COLLIDE

SMASH NEAR SWINDON .. EXPRESS AND GOODS WAGON TWO DEAD, 26 INJURED. [ British Official Windess. 1 RUGBY, Jan. 15. A serious railway accident occurred early this morning about five miles from Swindon, on the Great Western Railway, when a night express from Penzance to London came into collision with trucks which ha-d become uncoupled from a preceding coal train and were running back along the line. The first three coaches of the express were dertailed, one falling down an embankment. The driver and 27 passengers were I injured, nine seriously, and the driver and one passenger have since died. The fireman had a remarkable escape. The collision occurred in darkness early on a frosty morning. Passengers were thrown from their beds in a sleeping coach, many being pinneJ under wreckage. Bonfires were lit from the debris. The rescue work was accelerated owing to the action of a party of railway workers travelling on the same train to Didcot. They immediately went to the. assistance of the injured. Doctors and nurses who were rushed from Swindon attended to the injured in the light of fires of the wreckage. A railwayman was puzzled by the sound of “tweet tweet” from the engine, and found a budgerigar in apiston tube. A total of fourteen birds was re covered. They had been in a box which burst in the crash. Breakdown gangs have been at work all day clearing the blocked section of the line, and in the meantime trains Io and from South Wales and the west of England have been considerably delayed.