FALL UNDER TRAIN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 January 1939, Page 4

FALL UNDER TRAIN

1 MAN KILLED AT HASTINGS STATION. RESIDENT OF WELLINGTON. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) HASTINGS. January 27. Falling between the tender of the engine and the first carriage of the Palmerston North-Napier express shortly after noon today, Mr Hugh J. McHugh, married, Ngaio, Wellington, was killed instantly. Mr McHugh had been an inmate of the Pukeora Sanatorium and left that institution only this morning. The express, which was running five minutes late, was pulling out from the Hastings station platform when the fireman saw the lower portion of a man’s body projecting from under the first carriage and being dragged along the permanent way. He immediately applied the brakes and the train was stopped after having travelled about 10 yards. The body was lying between the front bogey wheels and the next pair of wheels of a passenger carriage. At the time the express was moving off, a mixed goods and passenger train for Waipukurau was standing cn the first siding. It is assumed that Mr McHugh had intended to- board this train.

There was a large crowd of people on the station platform at the time of the accident, but Me McHugh -was on the gravel strip between the two trains and, therefore, there were no eye-witnesses.