11 FEBRUARY 1871, Page 3

The most bizarre and horrible railway accident we ever remem-

ber to have heard of is reported by cable from the Hudson River. A train laden with passengers was going along quite comfortably, when (February 6) it passed a train laded with barrels of pe- troleum which had exploded. The passenger train caught fire, and rushing on, set fire to and burnt down a bridge. We pre- sume the train was stopped, for the bridge broke down, thirty persons were burned or drowned, and " many more," say 120, in- jured. Explosion, fire, and drowning are not often united in that way, and our wonder is that the neighbours did not take the train for an enemy, and fire into it, while the firemen mistook it for a fire, and poured in asphyxiating vapour. If an earthquake had then swallowed train, passengers, neighbours, firemen, and the river, the paragraph would have been complete, and the American. papers, if very short of material, might have quoted it.