VICTORIAN RAILWAY ACCIDENT

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 93, 28 July 1910, Page 3

VICTORIAN RAILWAY ACCIDENT

! AWFUL TRAGEDY IX THE FOG. I i ' I DETAILS OF THE SCENK OF CARN- } AGE AND DESTRUCTION'. _ Particulars of tlie terrible railway collision at 'Richmond, Melbourne, on .Monday of last week have come to hand. The Argus of Tuesday says: In the grey obscurity of the thick fog which overhung Melbourne yesterdays morning, a dreadful disaster took place at the Richmond railway station, a train from Brighton, delayed far beyond its scheduled time, had just pulled up at the southern platform, when another train, from Elsternwick—on the same line—came up out of the fog and era sited into the stationary train. Two carriages were telescoped—one in each train —and their passengers piled in crushed heaps of dead and wounded. The log clung thickly round them. People on the platform knew what had happened only by the crash and the screams of terror and agony. Help was soon at hand, j Slowly the wreckage was torn away, and those imprisoned in it released. Then the tale of dead and injured was counted. ■Nine people toad been killed—five men, three women and one boy—while thirty-three had ibeen so severely injured as to require surgical attendance at the railway platform. The number of those whose injuries had been reported up to a late hour last night was 114. AFTER THE SMASH: WHAT THE FOG HID. For a time the fog mercifully hid the grim horrors it had caused . Then it lifted, and the sun showed mutilated bodies stretched on the permanent way and the platform. These were the dead, who needed no attention. From the ruins of the train, with the help of puny axes, saws and bars, men were .heroically struggling to free those who were still pinned in agony. The rear train had suffered most. So long as the engine had ground its way into the standing train those in the eight crowded carriages behind it had been safe. But the moment its dreadful progress was arrested the strain of the sudden stop brought death and danger to them, too. The old type of carriages could, not standi the pressure. lii three places throughout the iine of I carriages dead and dying were found.] SomG of the scenes were horrible. Bodies were crushed out of all recognition.! Heads were smashed to pulp. And those mangled bodies were found mixec up with splintered timbers, twisted ironwork, and agonised survivors. Doctors and nurses were speedily on the scene. Supplies of blankets and brandy had been obtained as soon as the extent ofj the accident was appreciated. THE SMASH: HEART-RENDING SCENES. In view of all the circumstances, the ( wonder is not that the death-roil was so ( great, but that it Was not greater. No' two trains were running in the full tide j of the morning traffic to Melbourne. No trains are so closely packed as those j which reach Melbourne just at £>' o'clock- . this occasion, owing to their being; late, many passengers joined them at] wayside stations who had intended, tocatch the express, which runs later.! Nearly all the compartments were full,! and in many of them passengers were! standing up. ' The leading train was standing at the! Richmond station. Guard Davitt, who' was in charge,had.descended to the p!at-| form to assist in the ordinary duties,j passengers were hurrying up the steps to join the train, others had thrown open the carriage doors, and had stepped to the platform. Suddenly a frightful crash, was heard. To the people coining up the stairs the sound was do'.v:' .img. To those who were witnesses the sight wasj sickening. Another train had come i round the crescent, leading to the Rich-] mond station, and had dashed into the stationary train. A scene of iudescrib-' able confusion followed. The staff in the stationmaster's office looked out of the door, and immediately opposite was the worst portion of the wreck. They could have reached out from the door and have put their hands on dead bodies and ghastly Tuins. That was near the centre of the second train, where an old Hobson's Bay carriage splintered into matchwood, with its roof raised almost perpendicularly, presented a scene of hopeless wreckage. People in that carriage were shrieking for help, while others had been dashed to death before they could utter a sound. !

AMONG THE RUINS. j Further along the platform the scene was nearly as heart-rending. The loco-! motive had dashed into the van, out »i\ which Davitt had just stepped, cut through it, and was standing with broken funnel and twisted plate in the last compartment of the train. A passenger( who had alighted at Richmond had just I left the compartment, and he turned tol view the ruin which he had escaped. Others would never leave it alive, others I were taken from it frightfully injured;! whilst a few, in some miraculous way, escaped. The whole carriage was driven for-1 ward with frightful -force, and smashed) into the carriage in front. The spec-j tacle presented as between these two I carriages was as of a frightful trial I of strength, in which the destruction was equally allotted. The front com-| partment in the other were crushed to-[ wether, and the passengers were pinned; helplessly in the ruins. ' The first-class smoking carriages ne hind the colliding engine stood just as if thev had been quietly drawn to a standstill, but higher up the train a second-class carriage had swallowed a j first-class car. and its roof projected over the car like the upper jaw of an im-j

mense crocodile. • All tliese features were not taken in iby the eye at one glance, for confusion spread everywhere. Tt was. a nerveracing moment. The people wore too horror-stricken to do anything but run wildly, or stand mute, as they gazed with staring eves and working faces at the I wreckj~and>. worse than anything else, heard the cries of anguish, some muil'led. some piercing which issued from the; collapsed compartments. Tiut skilled workers at last appeared on the scene, and railwav men and laborers were attackiii"' Hie carriages with axe and) saw. lncking and cutting to clear awayi the debris liidin? from view the killed and injured. One of the first bodies! recovered was that of a woman m Uie wrecked second-class carriage on the rear train Her head and body were fearfully crushed, and she lay with her body protruding from the wreckage. j

•RESCUERS AT WORK. \ Doctors had been telephoned for in_ every direction, and from all points they, crath'ered to the station and immediately; £et to work. Curses in their neat uniforms appeared to bandaffe wounds and[ ( broken limbs, the people from neighbor-, in" shops sent along piles of blarney,!, numbers of men ran to and fro with\. bottles of brandy for the revival of the , white-faced men and women saved from, th ft wavdangerous work to the rescuers, j and it .was fretful work, for a slight

blunder, .1 little too much haste, and the people hemmed in the chaotic com panments might have been crushed worse than the collision had left them. Doors hung menacingly and partitions tivmolod at the slightest touch. With axe and saw the work went on. The rescuers cut through the floors of a compartment seven times before they could extricate the imprisoned passengers. Ji was a smoking compartment. A man was lying dead with the ash of his cigar lying on his coat. His breath had left his body at the same moment as the ash had dropped from the cigar. They sawed and sawe 1 and lifted a seat cautiously, and saw a woman sitting with her face upon her breast. She never spoke whin the sunlight gleamed into the compartment, and she never moved. Somebody touched her—she was dead. Her head was crushed. Near her were two young men groaning in their pain. Men who had been sitting on opposite sides of a compartment were found hemmed together, so that they could not move. The compartment was in darkness, and the atmosphere was stifling. The rescuers guessed at the closeness of the atmosphere, and one broke a window. A youth, whose head was tightly pressed against the head of another man. was lifted through a hole above a window. He was unhurt; but his boxer hat was crushed into soft cloth. "How fresh the air is,' he said, as pale and trembling he tottered on to his feet on the platform.

THE LAST MAN RESCUED. From the ruins of a first-class, compartment in the foremost tra.iij, passenger after passenger had bejifc extiiicaited, but there was still one moi'e left, almost hidden from sight by the ruin of wood and torn leather, broken glass, and scattered horsehair* fehe stuffing of the carriage cushions. Hie was a young man, Frank Shannon, snd he could not move an inch when they located him. But a dozen men worked at the tangle of the wood; not wood lightly thrown in a heap, but wood which had been wedged tightly into a small compass by terrific force. It was nearly half-past 10 o'clock; he had been in agony for over an hour, •pinned'by merciless timber in a position which would have been torture to a man sound of limb and body. He was the last to leave the wrecked trains, but he made no complaint of his fate. The sun was now shining brilliantly, as if it were endeavoring to make up for its late arrival. The strong, nimble hands of the. men on the broken sides and roof of the compartment were clearing the way, and at last tlie sun shone" on the tortured man; but magical as it is in giving a touch of brightness to a drab scene, it could not chase away the whiteness on the sufferer's face. "Hundreds of people were gazing towards him, sympathy writter; on each, of them, from the visage of the policeman who had forgotten lm officialdom, to the piiitul iac« of the Prime Minister, standing in the throng. They freed his crushed legs at last, and as thev did so his hand went out and sought the hand of one of his preservers. Then he handed his battered! hat to a constable. The sun seined to shine mor" brightly than ever, as, with his leos tightly bandaged, they placed him on a stretcher and bore him across; the rails to No. 2 platform, but to him it carried no glad look of welcome. He pimed n,hand across his eyes and shut it out. LIST OF THE KILLED. Bradshaw, Leonard (43 years), led-ger-keeper, rr» ! d ; r--' at Marlton crescent, St. Kilda, and employed by Messrs Beath, Scheissjand Co., Flinders lane. Hanger. Charles, commercial traveller, employed by Griffiths Bros.' Proprietary, Ltd., tea merchants Harper, Miss Dorothy, typiste, 7 Marlton crescent, St. Kilda. McMaster, Christopher, hatter, of Errol street, North Melbourne, and residing at 1 Raglan street, East St. Kilda. Muirhead, Mrs,' Edith Pine, widow, 34 Raleigh street, Windsor. ■Pullman, Miss Viola Avis Marion, Windemere crescent, Brighton Beach. Smith, Cecil Bernard Ogilvie, clerk, son of Mr. J. K. 0. Smith, solicitor, Pi-ahran. Wellington, Sydney Dauncev, son of Mr. H. S. Wellington, 62 TivJli street, South Yarra. Wright, William Radcliffe, Normanby street, Middle Brighton.