ly after seven A.M., it was timed
in 1868 to make the distance to Chester, one hundred and sixty-six miles,
in four hours and eighteen minutes; from Chester to Holyhead is
eighty-five miles, for running which the space of one hundred and
twenty-five minutes was allowed. Abergele is a point on the seacoast in
North Wales, nearly midway between these two places. On the 20th of
August, 1868, the Irish mail left Chester as usual. It was made up of
thirteen carriages in all, which were occupied--as the carriages of that
train usually were--by a large number of persons whose names, at least,
were widely known. Among these, on this particular occasion, were the
Duchess of Abercorn, wife of the then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, with
five children. Under the running arrangements of the London and
North-Western line a goods train left Chester half-an-hour before the
mail, and was placed upon the siding at Llanddulas, a station about a
mile-and-a-half beyond Abergele, to allow the mail to pass. From
Abergele to Llanddulas the track ascended by a gradient of some sixty
feet to the mile. On the day of the accident it chanced that certain
wagons between the engine and the rear end of the goods train had to be
taken out to be left at Llanddulas, and, in doing this, it became
necessary to separate the train and to leave five or six of the last
wagons in it standing on the main line, while those which were to be left
were backed on to a siding. The employe whose duty it was to have done
so, neglected to set the brake on the wagons thus left standing, and
consequently when the engine and the rest of the train returned for them,
the moment they were touched, and before a coupling could be effected,
the jar set them in motion down the incline toward Abergele. They
started so slowly that a brakeman of the train ran after them, fully
expecting to catch and stop them, but as they went down the grade they
soon outstripped him, and it became clear that there was nothing to check
them until they should meet the Irish mail, then almost due. It also
chanced that the wagons thus loosened were oil wagons.

The mail train was coming up the line at a speed of about thirty miles an
hour, when its engine-driver suddenly perceived the loose wagons coming
down upon it around the curve, and then but a few yards off. Seeing that
they were oil wagons, he almost instinctively sprang from his engine, and
was thrown down by the impetus and rolled to th