A frightful accident occurred on Wednesday morning on the Caledonian
Railway, in which eleven persons were killed and sixteen seriously injured. A passenger train had been detained two hours at Oxenholme junction, in consequence of an accident further up the line, and a mineral train had therefore gone on before it, and was being shunted at the time the passenger train came down upon it, the pointsmau having neglected to turn the points. It is the old story ; and let us have our signals as perfect as we may, we shall always have aocideuts while we have these frightfully unpunctual trains, and the order of the traffic altered in consequence. No doubt in this case one accident is said, to be the cause of the second and more fatal accident, but in all pro- bability the first accident was also due to unpunctuality. The organisation of the Companies, especially where they fit into each other, is altogether defective. We suspect that nothing would lead so much to the diminution of this enormous number of accidents, as a centralised regulation of the whole system of British Railways.
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