31 AUGUST 1861, Page 1

A great and unexampled railway disaster has proved that the

ex- cursion "to Brighton and back for half-a-crown," is not always a cheap one. Twenty-four lives have been lost in a railway accident of fearful horror. The collision in the Clayton tunnel was entirely due to the number and frequency of the excursion trains, which are pieced in between the regular trains with wholly unjustifiable reck- lessness. The Parliamentary train which caused the accident left Brighton only five minutes after its predecessor, and no less than three trains passed the same spot within eight minutes. The failure of the signals, which was the occasion of the accident, cannot, under such circumstances, be considered its genuine cause.