Richmond planet., 1903-01-03
AWFULRAILWAY WRECK
fwenty-eight Killed in Collision on
saa. Canadian Railroad.
AE LOCOMOTIVES MET HEAp-oN

Express Was Running Full Speed
When 1t Struck Slow Freight-In-
jured Lay Pinned Down For Hours
In Raging Blizzard.
London, Ont, Dec. 29.-One of the
most terrible railway disasters ever
known in Canada took place on Friday
night at Wanstead, a station on the
Sarnia branch of the Grand Trunk
Railway, 40 miles from this city.
Twenty-eight persons were killed and
about 80 were injured. The cause of
the wreck was mistake in telegraphic
orders. Express train No. 5, known as
the Pacific express, while flying west
ward at the rate of SO miles an hour,
collided head on with an east-bound
freight train. which was about to take
siding. The express was crowded
with passengers returning to their
homes from holiday visits, and the
scene that followed the collision was
most frightful. The darkness of night
and the raging of a blizzard added
horrors to the wreck.
The Pacific express is fast train
Friday night it was delayed two hours
by the heavy travel, and at Wanstead
1t was speeding to make up time. The
freight was working slowly east un-
der orders to take the switch at Wan
stead and allow the express to pass.
In the binding snow storm neither en-
gineer say the other train approach
ing, apparently, and the freight had
just commenced to pull IN on the sid
Ing when the passenger train came up.
The trains came together sQuarely
head-on. In a second the baggage and
express cars of the passenger train
telescoped into the day coach. This
day coach was reduced to splinters
and fragments back to the last three
windows. AS it was crowded the re-
suits were terrible. Fire that broke
out was quickly smothered, but the
nre was scarcely worse danger than
the cold, however. For three hours or
more wounded and manned passengers
were pinned underneath wreckage,
crying piteously for help while they
suffered from exposure to the ele-
ments. Exposure undoubtedly hastened
the death of some of the seriously in
jured and caused the death Of some
of those who might has been saved il
1t had been only a question of extricat.
ing them from the wreckage.
The work Of removing the dead and
injured was at once begun. Half a
dozen bodies were recovered within a
short time and a number OF wounded
removed from the wreckage. Trains
were made up to send the wounded
to London hospitals.
Efforts to identify the wounded and
dead were attended with difficulty
The dead bodies taken from the wreck
were frightfully mangled. some of
them almost beyond recognition. The
scenes attending the removal of the
bodies from the wreckage were pitt
ful in the extreme. Several families
were on the train, and the air was
filled with the anxious cries of those
separated from their loved ones, not
knowing whether they were killed or
saved
The responsibility for the disaster
has not been definitely fixed, but IL is
believed to have been due to a tele-
graph operators error. The company
officials say Andrew Carson, the op-
orator at Watford, caused the wreck.
He says he received the order for
No. 5, the express, to pass the freight
at Wanstead, but declares positively
that few minutes later Dispatcher ]. |
G. Kerr, at London, called him and
ordered him to Dust" or cancel the
order.