Various

THIS ENGINE WENT OVER THE EMBANKMENT IN THE HEATHFIELD ACCIDENT.

Lankester, Tunbridge Wells, Photo

By Frederick A. Talbot.

Illustrated by Remarkable Photographs.

Sir Fredrick Bramwell once calculated that if a man made up his mind to be killed in a railway accident, he would have to travel night and day in express trains for 900 years in order to fulfil his purpose. But such a happy state of affairs did not always exist.

In 1859, when there were only some 10,000 miles of railway in the United Kingdom, and the number of persons carried was about 175,000,000, it was calculated that one out of every 8,708,411 passengers was killed from causes beyond his own control; while in 1897, when over 21,000 miles of railway were in operation, and considerably over 1,000,000,000 passengers were carried, the average was one in about every 26,500,000.

Indeed, in the sixties railway disasters were of such frequent occurrence that, on December 27th, 1867, Her Majesty wrote to the directors of the various railway companies in London requesting them "to be as careful of other passengers as of herself." Now, owing to the stringent regulations of the Board of Trade, the infallible block system, and interlocking of signals and points, it is impossible for a signalman to err without the grossest culpable negligence. The railway companies, too, have considerably improved their permanent ways, constructed heavier rolling stock, while the contrivances for controlling and maintaining the trains in check are of the most perfect description.

But there is an old adage that "accidents will happen in the best regulated families." The railway is no exception to the rule, and, notwithstanding multitudinous and careful precautions, and the extreme vigilance displayed by officials, the community is startled now and again by the news of some dreadful catastrophe that has overwhelmed the iron steed. Fortunately, accidents are few and far between, while the number of passengers killed is infinitesimal—the total last year was only thirty-four.

It is a fortunate circumstance that in these days of lightning travelling a train very seldom comes to grief through travelling too rapidly. Yet such a disaster occurred between Heathfield and Mayfield on the Eastbourne section of the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway last year. For the length of about twenty miles this railway is a single line, and meanders along through the valleys among the hills, so as to avoid tunnelling, in the most zigzag manner. Between Heathfield and Mayfield, a distance of about four miles, there are a series of steep rising and falling gradients, many of one in fifty, and sharp S curves.

It was while travelling round one of these curves of nearly a third of a mile radius at a speed of from twenty-five to thirty miles an hour, that a train was derailed and the greater portion of it precipitated down an embankment sixty feet high. The engine fortunately fell over and remained by the side of the permanent way. Our tail-piece conveys a very good idea of the sharp curve, and also of the gradient. Although many of the carriages were smashed, only the driver was killed, and possibly, had he stuck to his engine, his life might have been spared.

Some of the passengers, as is generally the case in railway disasters, had marvellous escapes. One gentleman, who was sitting reading, suddenly felt the carriage give a lurch and then roll over and over down the embankment, while he was tossed violently about, till it crashed into another, when the superstructure was torn from its foundations. Considering the gravity of the accident it was a wonder that there was not a heavier death roll. As it was, it cost the company £13,000 for compensation to the injured.

The most shocking disaster that has ever happened upon any railway in the United Kingdom, excelling even the famous Tay Bridge disaster, when 74 passengers were killed by the bridge having collapsed, occurred on the North of Ireland Railway on June 12th, 1889, at Killooney. It is known as the Armagh accident.

A holiday excursion had been arranged by the teachers connected with a Sunday-school in Armagh. The place selected was Warrenpoint, on Carlingford Bay. The number of excursionists was about 1,200, mostly children of both sexes, with a few parents. The first train, consisting of 13 carriages and a brake-van, drawn by one engine, set off at 10 o'clock with 940 passengers. The officials at the station had been rather sceptical of the adequacy of one engine to draw the train, especially as there is a steep incline of 1 in 75, running along an embankment 60 feet high, at Killooney, two miles from Armagh. The driver, however, expressed absolute confidence in the capability of his engine.

Shortly after the excursion had left Armagh, an ordinary passenger train followed it from the same station at its scheduled time; but, owing to the excursion being heavily laden and unable to proceed very rapidly, the ordinary gained upon it, and was pulled up at Annaclare Bridge, at the foot of the incline. Meanwhile the first train was proceeding up the incline with great difficulty, and when halfway up came to a dead stoppage, the load proving too heavy for the engine.

The traffic master of the line, who was travelling with the train, knowing that the ordinary must be but a short distance behind, rendering shunting back to Armagh for additional locomotive power impossible, ordered the train to be divided, in spite of the objection and remonstrances of the guard and some of the passengers. As a precaution, he ordered stones to be placed under the wheels of the last carriage of the detached section to prevent its running away. The first part of the train, in starting, set back a trifle—not much, but sufficient to give the second half, consisting of seven carriages, crammed with its full complement of passengers, a start. The brakes were immediately applied, but were absolutely ineffectual, and the train, gathering momentum every minute, ran backwards towards Annaclare Bridge. Who shall describe the feelings of the unfortunate passengers, many of whom knew they were rushing to inevitable destruction, and yet were unable to do anything to prevent it or to save themselves?

After running a mile and a half, it dashed into the stationary train with a frightful crash. The force of the impact was terrific, and, although no one in the ordinary train was seriously hurt, the engine was overturned, crushing four children beneath it. All the carriages in the excursion train were wrecked. Some were smashed to atoms, scarcely one timber being left joined to another; many were telescoped, and formed a fearful pile, which in turn was mounted by one carriage almost intact.

The scene that followed baffles description. There being few men among the unfortunate party, and some of the officers accompanying the train having been seriously injured, a terrible panic ensued. The agonising cries of the wounded, and the frantic shrieks and exhortations for help from the imprisoned children, were sufficient to make the boldest shudder. But the teachers soon regained their presence of mind, and, help having arrived from Armagh, the work of rescue was begun.

It was fraught with great difficulty, and attended with grave danger, as the huge pieces of timber were poised in the most dangerous positions, threatening to fall every minute, and bury both rescuers and rescued beneath them.

Some fragments of the carriages and a few of the bodies had been thrown promiscuously down the embankment by the force of the collision, but the bulk of the wreck and the greater part of the unfortunate victims were to be found within a limited area. Eighty persons were killed, nearly all children, and about 400 were injured. The work of extrication was horrible, many of the passengers being so crushed and battered as to be absolutely unrecognisable, but they were eventually laid out on the bank with care.

Great honour is due to the heroic conduct and intrepidity displayed by a soldier—Private Cox, of the Royal Irish Fusiliers—who was in the runaway train. When he realised that no human power could avert the appalling disaster, he stepped out on to the foot-board, and, with death staring him in the face, withdrew the frightened children from the compartments as rapidly as he could, and dropped them on to the bank, where they were afterwards discovered almost unhurt. Nor did he desist until the trains had almost met, when he sprang off just in the nick of time to save his own life, and worked arduously in the extrication of the dead and injured. This was truly a splendid exhibition of courage.

Norton Fitzwarren, a short distance from Taunton on the Great Western Railway, was the scene of a calamitous catastrophe on November 11th, 1890, when the Cape Mail from Plymouth dashed into a stationary goods train while hurtling along at 50 miles an hour. The 6.45 goods train from Bristol had been shunted on to the up line at Norton Fitzwarren to let the 9.55 express goods train from Bristol pass by. It was about 2 o'clock in the morning, and while the slow goods was thus waiting on the up line, the signalman received warning of the approach of the special express train carrying passengers from the Cape liner Norham Castle, which had arrived at Plymouth the evening before, to London, and, forgetting all about the goods train, signalled "all clear." The result was a frightful collision.

Both engines were locked firmly together and completely wrecked; all the exterior fittings, including the funnel on the boiler of the express, were demolished and carried away, while the boiler itself was torn open. The broken carriages, trucks, and other dÉbris made an awful pile about 30 feet in height. Neither the fireman nor driver of the mail were killed, though they were terribly injured, owing to the fact that the engine had a heavy coal tender, which telescoped into the carriages immediately behind it, that bore the brunt of the crash from the rear. The driver of this train certainly was not born to be killed in a railway smash, having been in two serious accidents anterior to the Norton disaster, narrowly escaping with his life each time. A party of miners returning from the South African mines to the North of England were travelling in the first carriage, and were nearly all killed on the spot. So were also a party of card players in the same coach, with the exception of one young fellow who, having suffered great losses, had the good sense to give up playing and to leave the compartment at Exeter for another one in the rear of the train, and thus he probably saved his life. In one compartment the occupants, including women and children, had a most marvellous escape, the glass in the windows not even being broken, while that in every other compartment was shivered to fragments.

Another frightful accident, due to the negligence of the signalman, happened at Manor House Cabin, near Thirsk, on the North-Eastern Railway, in a dense fog, on the night of November 2nd, 1892, by which ten persons lost their lives. A goods train was standing in the station on the main line. The signalman, being fatigued, dropped asleep at his post. Presently he was awakened rather sharply by the ominous rumbling of the Scotch express, which had left Edinburgh for London at 10.30, and was now travelling at full speed. The signalman jumped to his feet, and, forgetting all about the stationary goods train waiting in the station on the same set of metals, signalled the approaching train.

On came the express through the dense fog, and crashed into the goods train with such force that the engines and all the carriages, with the exception of a Pullman sleeping-car, were thrown off the line. The carriages were all piled up, and the horrors of the catastrophe were accentuated by the broken and splintered wreckage catching fire. In our illustration the engine may be descried on the right, but a skeleton of its former majestic self, surrounded by a heterogeneous mass of broken wheels, iron joists, twisted and fashioned into the most fantastic shapes by the joint agencies of the collision and fire.

The Pullman car, or rather the charred remains of it, presents a most bizarre though painful object, being quite destitute of those many sumptuous embellishments which characterised it but a few hours previously. The Marquesses of Tweeddale and Huntly were travelling in this car, but they fortunately escaped without injury.

Some commiseration should be extended to the signalman, however, as he had been up at home since six o'clock that morning, his youngest child having died the day before. When he went on duty at eight o'clock in the evening he begged the stationmaster to excuse him under the painful circumstances, but no substitute could be found, and he resumed his duties in the ordinary course of things, with the result that Nature, who would not be denied, caused the signalman to sleep. The railway company were severely censured in the subsequent inquiry for the long hours of duty inflicted upon signalmen.

January 3rd of this year recorded another deplorable disaster on the Scottish extension of the Great Northern Railway, the North British Railway, in which the East Coast express, which left King's Cross the previous night, came to grief outside Dunbar station, not far from Edinburgh. The night was foggy, and owing to this and other violent inclemencies of the weather it arrived at the border town of Berwick twenty-five minutes late. At Dunbar station a mineral train was being shunted across the main line into a siding to allow this express to pass by, when one of the waggons became derailed. It was into this that the express dashed, completely knocking the obstacle into a thousand pieces, but the force of the collision caused the first of the two engines to leave the metals and plough through the sleepers and permanent way for about thirty yards, when it fell over on to its side, leaving the tender upright.

The second engine, although it did not share the fate of its leader, was greatly damaged. The carriage next to the engine was telescoped by the heavier corridor coaches behind. By the force of the impact many of the waggons fell upon a corridor coach, staving in the side and smashing the framework and glass of the windows to atoms. In this carriage the intercommunicating corridor extended longitudinally down one side of the car, and fortunately it was this side that bore the brunt of the violence of the collision.

Had it been otherwise the death roll would have been increased terribly. As it was, one lady was killed. Curiously enough this unfortunate lady, who was travelling with her sister, had only just changed her seat with the latter. Had she retained her seat her sister, in all probability, would have been killed instead.

A runaway goods-waggon was the cause of another very extraordinary accident on the London and North-Western Railway at Chelford, near Crewe, on Dec. 22nd four years ago, by which the Manchester mail was completely wrecked. A violent gale was raging at the time, and a waggon standing in a siding at Chelford station was blown on to the main line, along which the mail was signalled to pass. The express, dashing along at the rate of a mile a minute, struck the waggon with tremendous force, literally jumping over it and then falling over.

The engine-driver had a most Providential escape, being hurled off his engine over a hedge into a ploughed field, with no more serious injuries than a few bruises. The truck was tossed on one side into the air and struck the pillars of the station, ripping a portion out of the side of a heavy coach during its aerial flight. It then rebounded into a carriage in the centre of the train with direful effect. One coach, as will be seen in the illustration, was utterly smashed, the flooring, wheels, and interior being swept entirely away, while the sides were torn out. All the remaining carriages in its rear were completely wrecked.

Some were overturned on their sides, and one was so turned over as to stand on end, while an eye-witness stated "that some of the carriages were broken through by the carriage behind causing both sides of the interior compartments to meet and demolish the fittings." All together fourteen persons were killed and about forty or fifty injured, one lady having both her legs cut off.

Abbots Ripton, near Huntingdon, on the Great Northern Railway, was the scene of a terrible collision—or, rather, two collisions—on January 21st, 1876. A coal train of 33 waggons and a brake-van left Peterborough for London at 6 p.m. It was 18 minutes late in starting. The weather was extremely boisterous and stormy, while the snow fell in large flakes thickly and fast, seriously obscuring the outlook of the driver and guard of the train. The latter had seen the signals at Holme Station, and at the blocks at Conington and Wood Walton, which showed "all clear."

At Abbots Ripton the train slackened speed, as it was signalled to cross into a siding to permit the Scotch express, which was due from Edinburgh for London, to go by. The greater part of the goods train had passed safely into the siding when the Scotch express dashed into it at full speed with most disastrous results. By the force of the collision the engine of the Scotch express jumped across the down line on to the bank, where it fell on to its broadside, dragging with it the tender and three or four succeeding carriages. Hunt, the guard of the coal train, displayed great presence of mind. He asked the signalman if he had blocked the down line, but the latter was so agitated by the disaster—which had happened within a few yards of his box—that he inadvertently declared he had.

Hunt, feeling satisfied thereupon, left the box and rejoined his train, but, as a further precaution, thrust some fog signals into his pocket, which he placed on the rails of the down line. In less than ten minutes after the collision the driver and guard of the coal train set off to Huntingdon for assistance. They had not proceeded more than 800 yards when the Leeds down express, which had started from London at 6 p.m., was discerned dashing at top speed through the blinding storm. The driver of the coal train furiously sounded his whistle, while the guard waved his red lamp frantically to arrest the express. But it was too late, and it plunged into, and literally cut its way through, the wreck of the Scotch train.

The scene was a terrible one. The howling storm, the heartrending shrieks of the injured, the shouts of the rescuers and cries for help, the lurid glare of the burning wreckage, produced a scene never to be forgotten by those who witnessed it. All together fourteen persons were killed.

The South-Eastern Railway has long enjoyed a remarkable immunity from railway smashes, but this record was sadly marred a few months ago, when three persons were killed in a stationary train while standing outside St. John's station, near New Cross, by the Hastings express, through the inadvertence of the signalman, crashing into it from behind. Fortunately, owing to the dense fog prevalent, the express was only travelling at about eight miles an hour; but even then the concussion was sufficiently violent to telescope the guard's van into the carriage immediately preceding it, smashing it to pieces as if it were constructed of cardboard. It is wonderful that more lives were not lost.