The Press.
London, England, 1857-07-04 00:00:00

RAILWAY ACCIDENTS.

THE railway season appears to have set in with ifs
usual severity. The North Kent lina commenced
business on Sunday evening last, when the 9.13 p.m.
up train from Strood , which reached Blackheath in
safety at 10.3:2, fifteen minutes after time, on arriving
at Lewisham, was there brought to a stand by the
"danger" signal about 200 yards from the Lewisham
station. Suddenly the shrill whistle of the up train
from the Beckenham branch line was) heard. The

guard of the'Lewisham train, who had got out on the
bank, ran down towards the coming train, waving his
lantern and shouting. He was seen, but it was too late,
—the train passed him "at twenty miles an hour."
The choked whistle and the grating sound of the breaks
were heard by the affrighted passengers of the Lewis-
ham train, who leaped right and left out of the
windows ; in another instant the last carriages were
dashed into with frightful violence, crushed up like
hat-boxes, and some dozen people hurled into
eternity. The scene of course at such a moment
is only to be sketched by an eye-witness :
Such scenes as followed the collision ( writes one), I
could hardly have imagined. Those passengers who were
able quitted their seats, and ran back to ascertain the ex-
tent of the mischief; but it was dark, and many minutes
elapsed before lights could to procured. When torches
were forthcoming, it was bound that the hi'id carriages
were crushed beneath the tender, and it was only with the
aid of saws and other carpenter's tools that the killed and
wounded could be extracted. The shrieks and noise of the
affrig iced crowd who had jumped headlong, as it were,
from the carriages, added to the confusion, and upwards of
two hours elapsed before all the sufferers were got front
beneath the ruins.
The horrible nature of such an accident, the fright-
ful wounds inflicted, and the want of remedies which
are of course never at hand, are noticed more in
detail by a correspondent, " F.," of the Times, who
writes :

The confusion from first to last was frightful, and the
delay in procuring the mechanical contrivances which
alone could have brought relief to the sufferers was surely
needlessly prolonged. Nothing could be done to extract
the bodies of some of the sufferers without jacks and
powerful pulleys, and levers—for the mass of one carriage
had been hurled upon another, and had crushed and
buried the wretched travellers in the lower carriage in the
most complicated and hideous and apparently inextricable
manner. To all our applications to the railway people
for j.tcks we had for a reply that they had been sent for.
Consider what the exigency was. There was one poor
lady whose leg was jammed between the wheel of the
upper carriage and the iron and woodwork of the lower,
who was beseeching us to raise it only a little and she
could be saved. I saw her thus fixed for more than an
hour with an impending mass of splintered beams and
ironwork threatening to crush her every moment. Close
by her was a poor fellow whose body hung down through
the bottom of the carriage, but whose left leg was
likewise in a vice by which he alone was supported,
except when some of us were ab,e by turns to hold up
his bead by creeping under the carriages. One great
evil which we encountered in our efforts to extricate the
sufferers was the thronging of the mob and the absence of
control snd organisation. No doubt we received assist-
ance from the police in certain respects, for they
brought more lamps—a thing of material importance,
as there seemed at one time a chance of the medley
of broken woodwork which inclosed the poor creatures
being set on fire by the torches which were improvised.
I can speak personally as to the use on this occasion of a
little organisation. I found on running up to the place
where the screams and groans of agony were issuing two
young men already at work. At the risk of being crushed
and mangled by the dislocated heaps of iron, wood, and
glass, they had crawled under the broken carriages, which
were pressing alike ou the dying and the dead, and with
indotuitalle courage, energy, and skill gave direction
to one or two who could help how to apply our force.
One of these, whose face I could not see, adopted the
plan of communicating to the stranger who assisted
him by a number. He had found a young woman but
little hurt, but almost hopelessly buried, and transfixed
by her clothes in a most frightful position. By giving
directions, and by the help of a clasp-knife, and by literally
cutting and tearing her out of her clothes, we were able to
extricate her from being crushed and suffocated—a fate
which befel a poor woman next to her. 1 believe it was
this latter who whispered to me as I supported her head,
" Shall we be saved?" I begged her to keep up her courage,
and assured her she would be saved —for I then thought
that in a few more minutes we should have had the screws
and tackle which might have availed—but this was not to
be. Just before the carriage was thrown over on its side,
which wits the only mode at our command of getting at
three people, jammed in a hopeless condition, I saw her
dead and cold, her face quite black.
Eleven persona were killed, all of whom were in the
last carriage ; and upwards of forty more or less
severely wounded. An official inquiry and an inquest
is being held. At the inquiry, before Mr. Trail at
Greenwich, the guard of the Beckenham train ad-
mitted that he saw the distant signal at "danger " just
after they had passed Blackheath. " If a proper look-
out had been kept," he added, " these lights ought to
have been seen long before by the driver and fire-
man." The station•master at Blackheath swore that
his signalman, at the moment of the Beckenham
train leaving Blackheath, at 10.34, said, " All clear
up, sir," and that when he examined his signal-book
immediately afterwards, the signal "All clear up,
10.48," was entered. He admitted that when he ex-
amined the indicator it showed 46 Stop all up," and

thus proved one of two things, either that the " All
cleared up " had not been received, or that Lewisham
had acknowledged the departure of the 0.30 train.
The stationmaster at Lewisham swore that the
Strood train arrived at Lewisham at 10.40, and that
he stopped it in obedience to the telegraph, the
indicator showing "Stop all up" from Lewisham :

The collision took place at 10.53. The semaphore and
distant signals were at " danger ;" the whole of the line
was stopping, and the 0.30 train, on approaching the
station, had the same signals against them which had
brought up the 9.15 train. I first became aware of the
approach of the 9.30 train by seeing it dart under the
bridge, the engine having two white lights in front of it.
I do not know of any telegraph signal being received from
Blackheath between the time of the 9.15 train stopping
and the collision.

The under guard of the Beckenham train said :
I saw the LeAisham junction signals when between the
two bridges from Blackheath, and applied the break. The
signal was a red light. We were going at a good rate, what
I should call " full swing." I also saw the station signal
as well as the distant signal. Both were red lights. On
seeing the distant signal it is our duty to stop outside the
distant signal, but we could not do so on Suuday night,
because we were going so fast.

The signalmen of the Blackheath and Lewisham
stations have both been arrested.
Two dials were produced at the coroner's inquest
held yesterday at Lewisham by Mr. Carter, and the
working of the instruments explained by Mr. Tyer,
of Cornhill, who is connected with the railway
electric signals of the company. It appeared from
explanation to be as perfect as possible for the
prevention of a collision. To the instrument is
affixed a gong and a bell, for giving notice to each
station—the gong being struck for down trains and
the bell for the up trains, and on no occasion could
they be struck by mistake. If Lewisham signalled
to Blackheath " Stop all up," the latter could not
have altered it until there was another signal from
Lewisham that the line was clear. Blackheath with
two beats should have called the attention of Lew-
isham to the train being ready ; and even admitting
Lewisham might have given a wrong signal, pro.
vision was made for rectifying such a mistake before
the train leaves the station. The signals are struck
by the pressure of a button, and not by clockwork.

At the inquest Mr. Nelson, the station-master at
Lewisham, said that immediately after the collision
be ran to the Lewisham signal station :

He looked at the telegraph needles and sawthat they
stood " Stop all up." He asked Wild, " How is this?"
Wild said, " I can't say ; Blackheath gave me two beats
on the instrument, to which I gave no reply, as the needle
stood Stop all up.' " Two beats indicated that the up-
train was ready to start, but on receiving no reply the
train ought not to have been started, and the Blackheath
station master ought not to have detained it. If an answer
had been given for the train to proceed one beat would
have been sufficient ; that might have been given without
altering the needles pointing " Stop all up."
The origin of the accident lay in an old and
common cause of complaint :

The 9.56 Woolwich train was the brat cause of the
stoppage. It was stopped at New Cross for the collection
of tickets.

Photographs, taken by direction of the company
of the line by Mr. Beard, the photographist, of King
William-street, were produced before the jury,
showing that the signals at Lewisham were distinctly
visible at distances greater than necessary for the
driver to bring his train to a stand, and one of the
photographic views was taken from an engine placed
on the main line of the railway at the Blackheath
station, a distance of three-quarters of a mile,
the other from the engine when at the dis-
tance of 800 yards from the Lewisham station. In
both views the danger signal was most clearly deli-
neated, and in one, the guard who ran back on the
night of the accident to warn the approaching train
was also most accurately represented, as holding out
his lamp as a signal of danger.
But this terrible accident is not the only one of the
week. A Wigan excursion train on Saturday night
last met with a precisely similar accident from a
precisely similar cause. On its return home with its
Lad of 1,400 persons, it stopped at Kirby, and
one man and a boy proceeded to collect the tickets.
After twenty minutes' delay, a luggage train from
Liverpool came in sight; the danger signal was up,
but the gear of the luggage engine was out of
order ; the engineer could neither stop nor reverse
her, so he and the fireman jumped off, and left the
excursionists to Providence and their own legs. As
many as could, jumped out of the carriages, but
sufficient were left behind to give a list of seventy
severely injured by the collision. No deaths as yet
have occurred, though many dreadful injuries were
sustained. This is sufficient for one week ; possibly
as the season has begun we may have occasion to
renew the subject next week.