HEROISM OF A GUARD.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9467, 9 June 1909, Page 8

HEROISM OF A GUARD.

London, April 20. John Bates, the guard of a goods train, who had been left alone on the train, averted a serious disaster by his presence of mind yesterday on the branch of the London and NorthWestern Railway which rnns from Bletohley to Banbury. The train had been shunting at Padbudy Station, and during an interval of work the driver and the fireman left their engine.

Suddenly the engine started —no one knows how—and dashed ont of the siding. Bates, in his brake-van, realised in a flash that after the train had run through Buckingham on the single line it would reach Westbury, where a passenger train from Banbury would he standing. He,crawled from his van to the last of the dozen trucks which made up the goods train, and, hanging over the side of it, reached down and loosed the long lever which put the brake on. Then he crawled to the next track, and did the same thing, and then to the next.

It was a most perilous task, for the trucks'were filled with granite and ooal.

The train dashed through Buckingham Station at twenty miles an hour to the horror of the officials there, who saw a footplate with neither driver nor fireman on it, and a guard crawling from truck to track and dropping the brakes. Bates’ work told The engine could not pull the dozen, heavy trucks-with their brakes on, and it stopped about a mile on the Westbury side of Buckingham Station. Bates was disinclined to talk about hia exploit, and said that he had only dhne his duty. Bates, who has been in the service of the London anti North-Western Company for about twenty-seven years, is a middle-sized man about 45 years of age, and bears an excellent character. His daily work is to take a goods train from Bletchlfy to Blackley, and return with a passenger train to Winslow, and then to take the train from Winslow to Bletohley.