ATROCIOUS ATTEMPT TO UPSET A PASSENGER TRAIN.

Grey River Argus, Volume VIII, Issue 538, 29 June 1869, Page 4

ATROCIOUS ATTEMPT TO UPSET A PASSENGER TRAIN.

The other evening an atrocious attempt to destroy life was made by some miscreant upon the London and Southwestern Railway, in the vicinity of Clapham Junction. An eogine-driver in the employ of the company left the Feltham Station at 7.15 with an engine and tender for Waterloo, in order to bring out the eight o'clock down train for Windsor. He was running his engine tender foremost, and upon passing Clapham Junction he pulled up, as the signals were on both the boxes. He started afresh, and to the circumstance of his having been obliged to stop is probably duo his preservation from death, for while going between the Clapham Junction and West London signal-boxes, his locomotive ran over a

heavy sleeper which some one had placed across the metals. So violent was the shock that the guards of the tender were knocked away, although the engine remained on the metals. Lawrence ordered his fireman to see what was the matter, as it was extremely dark at the time. The fireman accordingly descended upon the engine-tender, and upon going back discovered the sleeper, which had been split by the violence of the collision. Taking the sleeper, as no more were then to be found upon the line, he ran his engine on to Nine Elms, and gave information to the police. Aboui seven minutes after Lawrence had driven his engine from the spot, where it had met the sleeper, the 7 15 p. m. train from Kingston ran up to the same place, the engine crashing into four or five more sleepers, which must have been placed upon the line directly Lawrence had taken his engine away. In this case also the engine very providentially did not quit the rails. The spot is close to an embankment some 20 feet high, and had the locomotive gone over it would probably have carried with it several out of the twelve or fourteen carriages on the train, which, was occupied by a number of passengers. The company is taking active measures to discover the perpetrator of this deed, and it is said that suspicion already points to a recently discharged employe.