A railway accident believed to be entirely without precedent occurred
on the Midland line, at Kibworth, near Leicester, on Saturday night. Something had gone wrong with the Scotch express, and the driver stopped in a dark cutting near Kib- worth, to examine the engine. It was found all right, but in starting again, the driver—said to be a very sober and experienced man — reversed the engine, and neither he nor the stoker perceived the change until they ran the train into an ironstone train standing half-a-mile off at Kibworth. Several compartments were " tele- scoped," and though no one was killed, one passenger had both legs broken and several more were severely cut. It is suggested that the driver heard a knocking inside his engine, and was so absorbed in guessing at its cause that he did not notice which way he was going, but the extraordinary point is that two men must have been so absorbed that neither noticed that the air in their faces was blowing the wrong way. There is no suggestion and no probability that they were drunk. How far would an engine-driver be responsible for so dangerous a blunder, when the error was really due to over-carefulness ?
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