A terrible railway accident took place on Thursday week on
the Southern Railway of France close to St. Geours, near Dax, between Bayonne and Bordeaux. The express from Madrid. the fastest 1one-distance train in the world, was derailed while travelling down a gradient where the train is officially authorised to run at the speed of seventy-four and a half miles an hour. On the engine and tender leaving the rails the couplings of the carriages behind broke, and the restaurant car, rearing itself endwise, fell forward, wheels in air, on the luggage van, which it smashed to matchwood. The engine-driver and stoker, though badly bruised, escaped, but of the twenty-seven occupants of the restaurant car only four escaped without serious injury, the Duke Canevaro di Zoagli, the Peruvian Minister at the Quirinal and at Paris, being among the killed. Mr. Rous-3Iarten, who has had special opportunities for inspecting the working of this particular express since its acceleration, maintains in his interesting letter to the Times of Tuesday that the speed at which the train was travelling was not excessive per se, but admits that "a speed which may be and is perfectly safe on a sound road easily becomes highly dangerous on a bad one, or on any portion of even a good road which may have been rendered temporarily un- sound," and adds that the section of the Midi line running through the Landes is apt to be made unsafe by continued wet weather. In other words, the higher the speed adopted, the greater the necessity for a good permanent way and constant inspection of those portions liable to be affected by climatic conditions. But is there any infallible means of testing the soundness of a line besides running over it at full speed ?
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