A Railway Horror

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVIII, Issue 18, 30 October 1912, Page 22

A Railway Horror

The Ditton Disaster — Terrible Scenes Round Burning Train.

From Our Special Correspondent.

LONDON, Sept. 21. Somebody once declared that the safest place on earth was in a railway coaeli travelling on an English railway, and it is only a few weeks ago that figures were published showing that the odds against a traveller being killed whilst making a railway journey in the Old Country were about a hundred million to one. Our railways take a pretty heavy toll on the workers on the various systems, but where passengers are concerned more are killed and maimed through acts of personal folly than by accidents in which the companies’ rolling stock is involved. Yet every now' and then the country is horrified by some ghastly mishap involving numerous deaths and an appalling list of more or less seriously injured. The past week has produced one of the most distressing railway disasters it is possible to imagine. A nine-coach express running from Chester to Liverpool jumped the rails whilst running at a high speed down an incline near Ditton Junction, a couple of miles from Widnes and smashed into the buttress of a bridge crossing the line. The big engine was completely wrecked by the impact, but the couplings between it and the carriages broke and the carriages ran on by their own momentum—some off and some on the rails—right into Ditton station. There the first two carriages dashed into the platform and were practically reduced to matchwood, every passenger in them being killed. Almost on the instant the wreckage caught fire, and soon all but the last two carriages were ablaze, the flames, fed by the gas escaping from the reservoirs attached to each coach, leaping high in the air. Ditton station was practically deserted at the time the accident happened, but the thunder-like crash of the engine’!, impact with the bridge, the rending and shattering of the wrecked carriages, the leaping flames, and the, shrieks of the injured and those confined to the burning carriages, roused the entire neighbourhood. In less time than it takes to tell hundreds of people anxious to help were on the scene, the fire brigade appeared, and the work of extricating the passen-

gers commenced. Time after time fierce gushes of flames drove the would-be rescuers back, and meanwhile, in spite of the brigade’s efforts, men and women were being roasted to death.

It was a scene of horror beyond description, and some of the would-be rescuers, who were forced to stand idly by whilst the imprisoned and roasting passengers’ heart-rending cries rent the air, were temporarily bereft of reason, and ran shrieking from the scene. Others, shaking as with palsy, stood gazing at the scene, dumb with horror and utterly incapable of movement for the time being.

\\ hilst the fire brigade sought to subdue the Hames, hundreds of men made desperate efforts to rescue the living and extricate the dead, the dying, and the injured, and meanwhile doctors, nurses, and ambulances were rushed to the scene. The station waiting rooms were speedily transformed into emergency hospitals, and there doctors and nurses gave first aid to those who were not beyond human aid, whilst ministers of various denominations sought to give consolation to those whose hours were numbered, or whose relatives were already numbered with the dead. Fourteen mangled and charred bodies were recovered from the debris, and of the fifty people removed to hospitals at Liverpool two died from their injuries ere the dawn of the morrow'.

Of the condition of the dead when extricated from the smouldering debris of the train, what shall we say? Some bodies had suffered ghastly mutilations, and some were so charred that dentification was only made possible by means of articles of jewellery found oil them. In one case practically all that was left of a human being was a heap of calcined bones, and, in another, the charred upper part of a body represented what

had been a short time before, a man in the prime of life. A headless, badly charred corpse was all that was left of a lady passenger, whilst in the same carriage was found the body of a man that broke to pieces as efforts w’ere made to remove it, and whose identification was only possible by the fused remains of a gold watch. Some remarkable escapes are recorded. A Mr and Mrs Brown, with their 15 months’ old infant, were travelling home from their holidays. Just as the accident happened Brown was standing up getting something from the rack. The next thing he knew' was that he was lying among the wreckage of a train. He extricated himself, and presently found his wife pinned down by the legs near some furiously-blazing wreckage.

With the help of a workman he managed to release her, badly scorched, just as the flames commenced to lick her dress. Of their child there was no sign, but presently a faint cry attracted attention to a pile of wreckage close at hand, and there, shielded by the scorched corpses of two men. they found the baby all unscathed. Another baby wa s found clasped in the arms of a badly-burned woman, who died even as she was pulled from the smoking ruins, but save for a few scratches and bruises, the little thin<» was unhurt.

Another remarkable incident in this fearful catastrophe was the escape of a hackney from a horse-box in the front part of the train. The box was reduced to firewood, and one horse was well nigh crushed to pulp, but the other animal, travelling in the box, escaped with nothing worse than a slight splinter wound, and was found grazing peacefully <m the line-side herbage half-a-mile up the line. 1