SCOTLAND.

Southland Times, Volume I, Issue 45, 14 April 1863, Page 3

SCOTLAND.

(From the Home News.) "We'understand," says the Scotsman, "that the late Marquis of Breadalbane made* previous to his death, the most liberal provision for a large number of workmen and other servants on his extensive estates in Argyleshife and Perthshire. The deceased nobleman has bequeathed sums varying from £50 to £1000 annually to various individuals, according to the situations they occupied ; and provisions has bee.i made for a number of old infirm servants wl •o have been unable to discharge their duties for some time." A statue to the late Henry Cockburn, the eminent Scotch Judge, has just been placed in the Parliament House Edinburgh. The terrible accident wbxh occurred three months ago on the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway has now been explained by special report from Captain Tyler. It will, perhaps, be remembered that on this railway one of the lines at a certain spot had been taken up for repairs, and that in consequence a single line only was available for both up and down traffic. The length of this single line was nearly two miles and a half. It began about three-quarters of a mile west of Winchburgh, and terminated about two and a half miles east of Linlithgow. On this line it was, of course, arranged that no two trains should be running at the same time, and a pilot engine was employed to convey the trains from one end to the other, and to notify after the passage had been accomplished, that the line was clear for further traffic, the accident occurred through the admission of a train at the western end before a train which had been admitted at the eastern end had passed over. The natural result was that the two trains came into violent collision about mid-way, and the question was how regulations apparently so simple and so sufficient could have been mistaken or disregarded This question Captain Tyler now answers. At each end of the single line there was a pointsman, whose duty it was to open or close the line to a coming train according to the information conveyed by the pilot. On the evening of the accident the pointsman at the western end was an old servant of the company, named Newton, whose general experience had been considerable, but to whom this special duty was rather new. He had been a platelayer for several years, but v/i'Jh an interval in which he relinquished this oc- ( ■culpation for that of an agricultural laborer. He had once, too, been actually a pointsman, near this very spot, but that was eight years previously, and then only for a few weeks. At the time of which we speak, he had been employed on j the station only a couple of days, and eoula there- j fore hardly have mastered all the details of the service. His inexperience, however, was only the first in a series of causes conducing to the disaster. On the fatal day the small pilot engine cotnroouly in use was superseded by a large goods engine, on which the pilot man travelled, so that the locomotive on the sight of which so much depended, had lost its characteristic aspect. All, however, had gone well up to the time when the pilot man on his engine had met the 5.15 p.m. train from Edinburgh, and convoyed it over the single line, and despatched it on its way to Glasgow. After performing this duty he returned to the eastern end to pick, up the 6 p.m. train from Edinburgh, and despatched it in liUe manner. On arriving at this end lie lound a train of empty trucks and a ballast train waiting to be piloted westward, and sohe took these in hand and convoyed them, not quite up to Mewtons' strain, but within a few yards of it, where ho stopped, and went back for the Edinburgh tram once more. That train was then waiting for him, and he admitted it on to the line, but in the meantime Newton, at the other end, had mistaken the ballast engine with the truck train tor the pilot engine, had fancied the line clear, and had admitted the Glasgow train,. What followed was but too inevitable a sequel. The case is compounded of small irregularities and little bits of mismanagement. The pilot engine should have been distinguishable by its appearance under any circumstances from engines on ordinary duty. It had originally been a very small engine, but even this characteristic had been lost by the substitu tion of a common goods engine at this time. Then instead of being exclusively employed on the pil.,t service, it had been usual to engage it in shitting trucks, conveying platelayers, and so forth, so taut in Newton's eyes there "was no reason why the ballast engine, though engaged upon such duty, should not have been the pilot engine. His delusion was completed by the circurastannce ot the pilot not having gone quite up to his station with this ballast train, and so, as the night was dark, as his acquaintance with the service was not very I perfect and as he supposed the line had been signalled as clear by thi3 ballast engine, he admitted the Glasgow train to its doom. A shocking case of murder took place on Jan. 7 in Edinburgh. A tradesman named Milne, well known a<i an artistic hair jeweller, had the misfortune lately to become bankrupt. He has since been in an excited state, and frequently intoxicated. The other day, while in that condition he made a rush at one of his workman named Patterson, and stabbed him in the breast, which produced almost instant death. Milne is now in custody.