RAILWAY COLLISION.

Westport Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 3273, 25 November 1884, Page 2

RAILWAY COLLISION.

A railway accident that was bad enough, but which might easily have been worse, occurred on the local line on Saturday night, The s.s. Koranui was being loaded, necessitating a lot of smart shunting. A string of twenty-four empty trucks were to be removed from the Staiths, and in the course of this being done nine or ten of them were left behind, the coupling evidently having become unfastened. The balance of the trucks were placed on another line of rails, without the others being missed—the night was intensely dark—and the work of running six loaded trucks up on the staiths was then proceeded with. The empties had come to a standstill on the flat ground, at the foot of the incline, just at the spot where the best pressure of steam is put on the engine for the ascent, and here the loaded train dashed into the empties. The driver (Mr S. Wakefield) pulled up immediately, when it was found that four or five of the empty trucks had been thrown off the line. Subsequently it was discovered that three buffers were completely broken off, and various other minor damages resulted. j Mr O'Neill, the Guard, was standing on the brake of the foremost truck, and received a bruise on the chest through being violently thrown against it. He had, however, a narrow escape of serious injury, for had the buffers of the trucks between which he stood given away, as others did, he would undoubtedly have been crushsd. The road was not injured in any way by the collision, and the trucks were soon placed on the line again. The accident forcibly points to the necessity for the Staiths and yard, where so much night work is done, being better lighted. ____________