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Engineering, 01-November-1895
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125 years ago today, on 22-October-1895, a train entering the Montparnasse Railway Station in Paris, failed to stop and crashed through a wall. Falling debris killed a poor woman on the street. The crew and the passengers all survived.
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San Francisco Call, 17-November-1895
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SINGULAR RAILROAD ACCIDENT.
Elevated Train Crashes Through a
Station and Falls to the Street.
A remarkable accident occurred about two weeks ago in Paris, by which an
engine and tender were precipitated from an elevated platform at the
Montparnasse station. The train rolled into the train shed at a rate of
about thirty-five miles an hour without being able to arrest itself,
crashed through the bumpers at the end of the track, as well as the
front wall of the station, and after traveling about forty-five feet
tumbled into the street below, the engine fairly on its nose. Fortunately
at this moment the air brake was put on and the rest of the
train was prevented from going over. It was to this circumstance that
the 123 passengers in the coaches owe their lives. As to the engineer
and fireman they were saved by being thrown from the engine at the first
shock and the only fatality, strange to say, that resulted from the
whole affair, was the killing of a merchant in the street below by the
fall of a block of stone detached from the wall by the shock. The cause
of the accident -- quite the most singular in French railway annals -- is
attributed to a defect in the hand brakes, which, strange to say, are
always used on French trains, save in cases of emergency, when the air
brakes are called into play, and in this case the air force could not be
applied quickly or effectually enough.