The Sun.
London, England, 1866-06-12 00:00:00

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PRICE. 4d.
STAMPED sd.

of the men who had formerly served in it.
It has been shown above at what numerical
provinces, and the Landwehr of the Guard consists
strength the troops at present in the field may be
reckoned ; the actual numbers of combatants and
non-combatants available in the case of war, with-
out the enrolment of the Landsturm, is shown by
Prussian returns to be 18,900 officers and 765,300
men with 146,800 horses, 1,141 guns
and 8,950
waggons. These figures as well as thOse I have
given above, may, as I am aware,
be contested.
There are so many ways of reckoning combatants
and non-combatants that it is always possible to
dispute the actual strength of an army, but I be-
lieve the statement I have made, with the necessary
reservations for non-combatants, to be substantially
correct.

The Accident on the Great Northern Railway

WELWYN, Monday Evening.
Three railway trains with thheniernreeat
ll engines and ten-
ders, and waggons and trucks, huddled together,
eadecainddtwhichsmashed
occurred
euepeainadt4 Saulichttilne briefafter
midnight
jamisthmeen
yesterday, and which has resulted in the
death of one man, while two others are placed in
such imminent peril that their lives are despaired
of. Simple and obvious as are the causes of this
unpretilented catastrophe, it would seem that it-
could not by possibility have occurred had there not
been at least two or three distinct breaches of the
regulations issued by the company for the guidance
of their servants and the safety of the public. These
regulations on the Great Northern are
regarded as singularly clear and good,
in some degree is to be attributed the comparative
immunity from serious accidents which this line has
an henceenerally
hitherto enjoyed. The infraction of the rules re-
ferred to, and the consequences to which it led, will
become more apparent as we describe in a manner
t
which, as has been observed, is without a parallel in
the
nearestt sleyts ti
oos on yearsavi smeie a 2,
point
hmfgeeoirrl.
ee miles
rf
Immediately
helo
yimt eu King,ntog
thesb
n from
- beyond
roo s s
and i
snm
which
disasters.
Welwyn
rec-
tor, composed his " Night Thoughts," and was
this station and between it and Stevenage the line
enters a tunnel, or rather two tunnels in succession,
called respectively the " Southern Welwyn tunnel"
and the " Northern Welwyn tunnel." The former
of these is a quarter of a mile long, then intervenes
a quarter of a mile of open cutting, and alter this
buried ol annals
eintelligible
ittxhy weof
railwaythe
nature of the accident,
comes the other tunnel, which is three-quarters of
a mile long. It was about the middle of this latter
tunnel, close to a shaft, that the accident oc-
curred ; - the line is here perfectly straight ; it
is very nearly on a dead level ; the tun-
nel is through chalk, and above the crown
of the arch at this point there is about 50 feet of
chalk. A train of empty coal waggons had been
despatched at a little after 11 o'clock from King's-
cross for Ilit3hin, and it had proceeded with due
regularity until it reached the scere of this extra-
ordinary catastrophe when a tube in the engine
burst and rendered it incapable of proceeding on its
journey. Now, it was evidently the first duty of the
guard on this accident occurring, to hasten back with
his lamp and prevent the approach of any other train
on the same line of rails. As the body of this un-
fortunate man—Joseph Ray—was found close to
his break, at the rear of the train, it is pretty clear
that this regulation, which is common to all railways
alike, was neglected by him, and dearly did he pay
for his neglect, for he now lies a mangled corpse at
the Railway Arms Inn, near the station. Not long
after the " empties" had been started, a Midland
goods train was despatched from King's-cross in the
same direction. What interval of time there was
between the two trains has not yet been stated ; but,
doubtless, it would have been ample for all purposes
of safety had no casualty occurred to the train in
front. As it was, its proximity to the other train,
coupled with the neglect of the ordinary regulations
by servants of the company, was the cause of the
sad calamity. On it came, unconscious of danger,
on the same line of rails as the unlucky train of
empties which had broken down. There was no
signal at the entrance to the southern tunnel to
indicate danger or even caution ; and in a few
moments it had dashed head-long into the
" empties." The violence of such a collision
was, of course, tremendous. Joseph Ray, the
guard, was doubtless killed on the spot ; John
Rawlings, a man who was with him iu his break, was
so mangled and mutilated that he now lies in a
hopeless state at the same inn as his dead com-
panion ; and the engine of the second train with
several of its waggons was thrown across the up
line, so as to block that which had previously been
unimpeded. Scarcely had this second mishap oc-
curred when a Great Northern up goods train
arrived, and, dashing into the engine and waggons
of the Midland which were lying across its line,
completed the catastrophe and produced the extra-
ordinary results which were narrated, with as much
accuracy as the hurry in which the report was ne-
cessarily written permitted, in Ike Sun of this
morning. By this crash a third man—Lacey, guard
of the up-train—sustained severe and dangerous in-
juries.

In order that allthese events should have occurred
in this tunnel there must have been sad neglect
somewhere. A man is stationed at the south end
of the south tunnel, and another at the north (or
Knebworth) end of the north tunnel. It is the duty
of these men to signal to each other the entrance
and departure of every train into and from the
tunnel, and' to allow no other train to enter until
the departure of the preceding train has been duly
signalled. It is evident there must have been some
neglect or misunderstanding of these signals, and
their import en the occasion in question ; for not
only was the Midland down train not warned that
the " empties" had not emerged from the tunnel,
but the Great Northern up train was left unwarned
that there were at the moment of its approach two
trains in the tunnel. Either the drivers of these
trains were uuwarned, or they disregarded the warn-
ing. Those are questions which the Board of Trade
and the coroner's jury will doubtless have to solve.
It is even said that the perfection of the system, in
theory, of this signalling at either end of a tunnel
was an excuse to the guard Ray for not going back
to stop any advancing train ; because he felt such
confidence in the signalling that he had no appre-
hension whatever of a train entering the tunnel until
his train had got out of it. However perfect in
theory, this system seems to have failed in this par-
ticular emergency. The state of the engine at-
tached to the first train may also form a subject of
investigation.

With each of the goods trains were a driver and
stoker and two guards, and with the empties a
driver, stoker, one guard, and his friend Rawlings,
whom he was conveying on his way to Peterbo-
rough ; so that there Were in all 12 persons travel-
ling with these three trains. It seems a miracle
that all were not killed on the spot, instead of one
only being instantaneously killed and the lives of
two others jeopardised.
In The Sun of yesterday evening we stated some
of the measures that had been had recourse to to
clear the line, and render it fit for the resumption of
traffic. These exertions were continued to-day with
unabated vigour, and with such success that at 9
o'clock this evening the entire wreck of the cata-
strophe had been removed. These operations were
carried on under the direction of Mr. Johnson, the
engineer of the line, with a force of about 450
navvies and fitters, and labourers working in relays.
The entire scene of ruin was confined to a space of
about 100 yards in the centre of the northern tun-
nel. The men attacked this at either end, working
away with picks,
and crowbars, and trolleys, and
wheeling off large portions of the ruins as they se-
parated then from the general wreck. As they