SERIOUS RAILWAY ACCIDENT.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 9 November 1901, Page 4

SERIOUS RAILWAY ACCIDENT.

Train Runs Away and Kills Fortyone Persons.

Forty-one deaths have resulted from one of the most extraordinary train wrecks in the history of America. The place of the accident wa? in Montana, on a steep grade of the Rocky Mountains, the road was the great Northern, and the time was late on Friday night. A freight train of twenty-eight coaches going east was at Essex. The enginedriver went forward, leaving the stoker on the engine in the rear, in charge of the train. The stoker set the air brakes, and leaving the train standing on the lines, went to coal up. The conductor, Mr Matthews, was in the office getting orders, and both brakesmen were with the engines. The air leaked, and the train being on a steep grade, slipped away without the officials knowing it, and dashed down the mountain at a tremendous rate cf speed, variously ostima'edat seventyfive fo a hundred miles an hour.

After rushing downhill seventeen miles it crushed into a passenger train, which was going in the same direction, otherwise the disaster fearful as it was, would have been even greater. So swiftly had the wild train descended in the darkness that the passengers had no warning of the impending danger. Of forty-three men in the day coach in the rear of the passenger train, thirty mot there death. Ten cars of the goods trains were loaded with shingles. These were scattereh over the ruins, which immediately took fire, and a conflagration, lighting up the country for miles around, followed. The assistant general superintendent, Mr Downes, who had just been chosen as vice-presi-dent of the Spokane falls and Northern Line, was dining in his private car with his son. Both the father and son and their cook were instantly killed. Several men called aloud for help, asking that it they could not be got out they might be shot rather than suffer the agony of death from the flames, which wore getting nearer to them every second. People were compelled by the intense heat to stand aside and see them burned alive, being powerless to lend aid or assistance. Thirteen men, all injured, were got_ out of the rear coach by a most inspiriting display of heroism, the rescuers imperilling their own lives. Some of the injured died later. The bodies of all save five of the dead were cremated in the burning ruins. The majority of those killed were Scandinavian laborers.