A TRAIN ON FIRE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 3855, 11 July 1891, Page 2

A TRAIN ON FIRE.

TWO RACEHORSES BURNT. A PITIFUL SIGHT. Shortly before the Manukau Kailway Station was reached by the train to Wellington on Thursday evening, according to the I'ost, Guard Hickey, who was in charge, smelt fire, and within a minute or two afterwards he observed a cloud of white smoke issuing from the louvre blind of the horse-box. Hickey at once flashed his red light, and the driver immediately came to a standstill. On opening the box the straw bedding was found to be burnt to a red ash, and two race horses, maddened with pain, were longing out frantically. The box contained the steeplechaser, Dangerous, owned by Mr Thurston, and the mare Lucy Glitters, the property of Mr A. R. Fitzherbert, of Palmerston North. Dangerous, in his paroxysm of torture, had managed to get one foreleg and one hind-leg over the bar which petitioned off the box, and the difficulty of lowering this panel was attended by no little danger, owing to the kicking of the poor brutes. The mare was the most injured of the two, one of her legs being literally roasted, and when she was driven from the stall it tt&s seen that one of her forehoofs dropped off the leg, and was picked up by her jockey. Lucy, upon being liberated, rushed mto a pool of water alongside the line, where she was put out of her misery by some of the plate-layers. The plight of Dangerous was nothing near so sad as that of his companion. The legs were searched, as was also his body, and there were several abrasions of the skin between the legs, where he had got across the bar. The horsebox was burned very little. The fire had scorched one of the sides, but the damage was so trifling that the box was shunted on to the Government line on arriving in town, and with Dangerous and his jockey, was forwarded on to the Lower Hutt. Both horses had engagements at the Winter Meeting of the W.R.C., to be held at the H utt today, and as they were in transmission at the owner's risk, the loss to Messrs Fitzherbert and Thurston, more especially in the case of the formei gentleman, will be very considerable. Lucy's hoof was found by a railwaj porter in a second-class carriage, r where probably it had been couveyet r by her jockey. When the fire was ■ discovered it transpired that th< « jockeys were in a second-clasi carriage, whilst the owners of th< ; horses were in first-class carriages 1 The guard states that some con ' siderable time after leaving Longbun ' and when alongside one of the road " side station platforms, he saw the tw

boys m the box with tueir charges. The supposition that a spark from the engine got into the horse box and set fire to the bedding is ridiculed by the railway authorities as being an impossibility, as there is no opening in the ends, aud it would, they assert, be impossible for spark<? to get through the side louvres. The theory propounded by tLe officers of the Wellington and Manawatu railway is that someone had unwittingly dropped a light from his pipe on the straw before leaving the box, or else a match may have been left in the straw, and struck by one of the horses' hoofs. On Wednesdo-y night last ten full horse boxes came down the same line, and the guard of that train states that at one of the stations he saw tLe stable boys in one of the boxes smoking and playing cards by the light of a candle. Mr Gould, the Wellington Btationmaster, who has had a lengthy experience on the Prussian railways, says he has never known an accident similar to that of last night occur. The matter will form the subject of a rigid enquiry on the part of the Wellington-Manawatu authorities.