RAILWAY DISASTERS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8357, 13 February 1907, Page 6

RAILWAY DISASTERS.

WHOLESALE LOSS OF LIFE. By Telegraph—Press Association. (Per Mail Steamer at Auckland). SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 3. Fifty-three persons were killed and three score were injured in a train wreck on the Baltimore and Ohio Railway, three miles from Washington, on the night of December 30th, through a collision between a passenger train from Fredericksburg (Maryland) and eight empty passenger cars. The engine-driver of the empty train failed to see a signal on account of a fog. At Terra Cotta, where the wreck occurred, a number of passengers were waiting to take the Fredericksburg train. Only two of these escaped, the rest being either killed by being drawn under the train or being injured by flying wreckage. The train men have been arrested, and it is believed that the blame will rest with the engine-driver of the empty train, who declares that the fog hid the signal from him. The train despatcher states that there was a fog, but that it was not heavy enough to hide the red light from the sight of the enginedriver. The latter, who is in prison, seems to be dazed by the magnitude of his r error, and by the terrible experience through which he passed, and can make nojj further explanation than the simple declaration if the red light was displayed he [did not see it. The scenes at the wreck were indescribably horrible. A despatch from Topeka (Kansas), dated January 2nd, says that two white men, a negro train porter, and about thirty Mexican labourers lost their lives, and fiftyfive persons were injured, when two passenger trains on the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railway collided head on, four miles west of Volland (Kansas) at 5.10 this morning. The exact number of dead will never be known, as a number of Mexicans were completely cremated in the flames, and their charred bones were brushed to ashes in the removal of the wreckage. The trains met on a sharp curve with a fearful impact. The fire spread with great rapidity. A nineteen-year-old telegraph operator at Volland is responsible for the wreck. He failed to stop train No. 29 at his station after being ordered to hold it there until No. 30 had passed. The boy quickly realised his blunder, and tried in vain to signal the train. He then wired the Central Office: "Train No. 29 has gone, and so have I." He tried to flee, but was captured. A curious feature of the disaster was the fact that relief trains were ordered out before the collision actually occurred. Operators all along the line knew what was imminent, but had no means of signalling the train.