TRAIN WRECKING.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1703, 5 August 1879, Page 3

TRAIN WRECKING.

At Nuneaton an accusation o£: a most serious nature was brought against two men named John Parker and John Arnold, who were charged with having, on April 19th, attempted to upset a train on the Trent Valley Railway. Mr E. Hinton appeared on behalf of the London and North-Western Railway Company, by whom the proceedings were instituted. Mr Homer, of Coventry, represented the prisoners, who, having been committed for trial on charges of i robbing the present prosecutors, were brought from Warwick Gaol in charge of two - warders. Mr Hinton, in his opening statement, said that the prisoners, if proved guilty of the offence with which they were charged, l would be liable to long imprisonment. On the night named, a number of coping stones, weighing in the aggregate about 30c wt., were thrown from a private accommodation bridge near Nuneaton on the line. At the lime some of the stones were thrown over, a luggage train was passing, and the breaksman in charge, on arriving at Rugby, found that two of them had lodged on the waggons and another on the covered van. Shortly afterwards another luggage train passed by, and on its arriving in London a coping stone was found in one of the waggons;: the other stones were scattered about the line. While searching for goods which had been stolen from the railway, Inspector Coppin, in the employ of the railway company, and Inspector Hannah, of tho local police, went to Arnold’s house, and there found a spade and axe. On being asked by tho officers to account for the possession of these tools, he stated that he purchased them some six months previously. As a matter of fact, however, they ware taken from a hut near the bridge from which the stones were thrown, and on the night of tho outrage the prisoner Arnold had some conversation with Smart, a detective in the employ of the company, and had told that officer that he should never have touched the stones on the bridge had it not been for Parker (the other prisoner). Subsequently Parker’s house was visited by the detectives, and there an iron instrument, called a drift, was found. He should show by experts that an impression which had been left on the mortar bed whereon tho stones had laid, and marks made on the stones themselves, were similar in size and appearance to those which would probably have been made by the drift. Between twelve and one o’clock on tho night of tho outrage tho two prisoners were seen about a mile and a half from the bridge, and walking from its direction. Evidence in support of this statement was adduced, and it was also proved that soon after the stones were thrown down the Irish mail and one or twofast express trains passed by the bridge, which is situated in a lonely spot between Atherstone and Nuneaton* and is very seldom used. Soon after the occurrence the bridge was examined by Detective Smart, who cut a piece of wood the exact size of the impression left on the mortar by tho instrument used to raise the stones. This, when produced in Court, corresponded materially with tho drift found in Parker’s house. Tho stone thrown onto the train which was cn route to London was found embedded in tho top of a cask of ale, and others of equal weight alighted on a Rugby train. While at tho police-station Arnold admitted to Inspector Hannah that his statement as to having purchased the spade and axo was false, and asserted he had found them within about a mile from the bridge on the morning following the outrage. After hearing the ©vidonce, which was exceedingly voluminous, tho magistrates committed the prisoners for trial at the next Warwick Assizes. Each train struck by the stones contained a considerable amount of valuable property, and it is supposed that the objects of the perpetrators of the outrage was to throw tho waggons off the lino for the purpose of plunder. It is obvious that had any of tho atones fallen foul of the rails the result would have been most disastrous to the last passenger trains which passed the spot during the evening. As soon as the signalman employed in a box about 100 yards from tho bridge was aware of what had occurred, ho blocked the lino until the obstructions wero removed.