RAILWAY ACCIDENT TO THE FLYING SCOTCHMAN.

Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1319, 11 October 1880, Page 2

RAILWAY ACCIDENT TO THE FLYING SCOTCHMAN.

TERRIBLE SCENE. On 10th August the Flying Scotchman which is one of the fastest express trains out of London, and which runs to Edinburgh, met with a shocking accident,. The scene was the Marshall Meadows" which are at about an equal distance from I Berwick and Burnmonth. Just at this. | point a curve takes place, and new rails and sleepers had just been laid, and the navvies were still busy with their work j when the accident occurred. The Plyiju Scotchman, which leaves Edinburgh at 110 a.m., and is due at Berwick at 11.10 j was warned of danger by the floating of red flag 1 . When the train came within sight of the signal it was going at the rate of fifty miles an hour. The distance at which the.red flag was seen seems to kvo been too short to allow the driver to pull up his train, which dashed along ontho. new laid rails, which were turn up mid, bent into all imaginable shapes. The. force of the train appears to have been. so. great that, the engine rebounded to the other side of the line, tore up the Berondl roadway, and again rebounded in such it manner that it was turned with its fiicoim the direction of Edinburgh. The wreckage was frightful. The train consisted of nine carriages, two guards' vans, and the engine and tender. At first the passengers felt only an oscillation of the train, and then a sudden divergence of the carriages from the line. The engine had parted from the,tender and been thrown across the lines, the front wheels beisag; imbedded in the bank next to the line on. which the train was running. The tender was thrown up the bank on the opposite: side, with the wheels and under framework of the guard's van on the top of it,, the remainder of the van being fully, twenty yards up the bank, and almostr. smashed to pieces. The first carriage was. - lying alongside the guard's van, and the 3econd, third } audi fourth were twisted across the line,, forming as nearly a possible the letter S. Another carriage was lying on the-bank parallel with the engine, and the remaining carriages were partly j standing on the line and partly leaning; on the bank, all more or leas destroyed.. The rails are all torn up and bent into.»lil sorts of shapes, and the ground and. thai banks on each side are ploughed to » great extent. From the appearance of the train it is marvellous that unyono could have escaped without at least being more or less injured. The engine-driver —Thompson, of Newcastle—must haves been killed instantaneously- Two other' servants of the company wore killed, butt the passengers, singular to, relate, seemed to have escaped without any serious, injury.