TRAIN DISASTER FORESEEN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 10 September 1907, Page 4

TRAIN DISASTER FORESEEN.

RELIEF SENT BEFORE COLLISION OCCURS. FORTY KILLED. New York, July 21. A terrible train disaster occurred yesterday on the Pere Marquette raihviy, near Detroit, forty people being killed and sixty injured. Nearly 1000 men employed-by the Pore Marquette Railway Company, with their wives and families, went for their annual excursion by train from lonia to Detroit. Just before reaching Detroit the train entered a curved cutting, where there is only a single line. The railway officials realised a quarter of an hour before that a terrible mistake had been made, but it was impossible to prevent the collision, and they accordingly despatched a relief train before the disaster actually occurred. Neither of the drivers knew of the approach of the other's train until just before they met. The heavy engine of the goods train ploughed its way through the p\ssenger train, and all the occupants of the first five cars were either killed or injured. There were 150 children in the party, but only a few of them were hurt, tha majority of the fatalities occurring among the men. The relief train arrived soon afterwards with doctors, nurses, and surgical appliances, and the sixty injured were given first aid and then removed to the Detroit Hospital. It is feared that more than half of these will die. The bodies of the forty killed wert extricated from the wreck only after the greatest difficulty. Many of them had been mangled beyond recognition.