A serious accident occurred to the Scottish express from London
to Aberdeen at 4.55 a.m. on Tuesday morning. The "Flying Scotsman," which leaves London at 8 p.m., had crossed the Forth Bridge, and was travelling at a high rate of speed, when it collided, just beyond Burntisland Station, with the engine of a goods train which was hacking into a siding. Only one buffer of the goods engine was in the way of the express, but the collision hurled the engine and tender off the rails and over a six-foot bank on to the adjacent golf- links. The driver and fireman of the passenger engine were pinned under the debris and killed on the spot, and ten passengers in the two carriages which followed the engine over the bank were injured, four seriously. Yet, in spite of the force of the impact, the passengers in the rear carriages were unaware that an accident had happened, while the goods engine never left the rails, the driver and fireman escaping unhurt. One of the derailed passenger coaches caught fire, but, thanks to the apparatus provided by the company after the Aisgill disaster, the guard of the express was able to extinguish it after cutting off the gas supply, though in doing so one of his bands was badly burned. We may add that the evidence as to the position of the signals given at the inquiry opened on Thursday was conflicting.
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