FATAL RAILWAY SMASH

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 558, 10 January 1929, Page 1

FATAL RAILWAY SMASH

FOUR PERSONS KILLED IN GLOUCESTERSHIRE

TRAINS HIT IN A FOG

(United P.A.—By Telegraph — Copyright) (Australian and N.Z. Press Association) (United Service) LONDON, Wednesday.

A serious railway accident occurred at. Ashchurch. near Tewkesbury, in Gloucestershire. Two coaches on the London Midland and Scottish Company’s north-hound Bristol-Nottingham mail train were capsized through a collision with a goods train. The driver of the express, and three passengers, were killed, and four passengers were seriously injurd. and 11 slightly hurt. The engine of the express was derailed with a number of coaches which blocked both lines. Ambulances were rushed from Gloucester, 20 miles away, to the scene of the accident. Foggy weather prevailed at the time.

The spot where the collision occurred is within 20 miles of Charfield, where 15 people .were killed, and 30 were injured, in a similar collision on the same company’s line on October 13. Huge bonfires, fed by the timber from the wrecked coaches, were lighted to enable parties of doctors and nurses to cary out rescue work in the dense fog and darkness. BODIES IN TANGLED IRON

The bodies of the three passengers who were killed were discovered amid a tangled mass of ironwork. Apparently the express train cut right through the goods train, which was shunting across the track. The carriages on the express were electrically lighted, and so they did not The lights in some of the overturned coaches remained burning, and thus assisted the rescuers. One passenger lay for hours under the wreckage until a railway crane was used to raise the truck from his crushed foot. Owing to the shortage!of ambulances at Cheltenham, the police requisitioned motor-buses to convey the injured long distances to hospital.