3-085-779 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Railway Accident at Barassie: wrecked carriages, 1898. '...an accident, attended by disastrous results, took place on the Glasgow and South-Western Railway. The train, which contained about eighteen persons, was the seven o'clock...from Kilmarnock...Barassie Junction, where many lines converge in a complicated network, was approached, and at that moment the driver saw a goods train from Ayr coming at great speed. The collision was inevitable, and both trains crashed into each other...It was at once manifest that terrible injury to life and limb had been wrought by the disaster; the stoker of the passenger train was horribly mutilated and evidently at the point of death. The driver and fireman of the goods train were already dead...The work of rescue was quickly undertaken, and the dead and wounded, many of the latter in a pitiable condition, were extricated from the debris...The victims were for the most part operatives and railway servants. Several leave widows and large families. The total killed was seven persons, while five were injured...The cause of the accident is said to have been an overrunning of the signals on the part of the goods driver. It is stated, however...that he saw the danger and tried to avert it'. From "Illustrated London News", 1898.