JANUARY 20th, 1923: At the start of 1923, with the Civil War causing chaos on many fronts, the Free State government set up secret military tribunals to hand down death sentences and tried to restore order to commercial transactions, which were breaking down as people ignored court orders and stopped repaying loans, debts and rents.
The railways were prime targets for the anti-Treaty IRA, with attacks, robberies and attempts to derail trains.
Today’s Irish Times that year carried the following report of an incident in Co Kerry.
LISCAHANE, WHICH lies between the Great Southern and Western Railway Company’s Tralee and Ardfert stations, was the scene of a railway outrage in which on Thursday night a goods train was wrecked, the engine driver and fireman being killed.
The train was on its way from Limerick to Tralee, and was due to pass Liscahane at about seven o’clock. There is a culvert there, at which a linesman stands whose duty is to show a green light if all is safe and a red light if there is danger. A few minutes before the train arrived a band of armed men, numbering between twenty and thirty, came and took the linesman prisoner, removing him to a place whence he could not signal to the train. Others tore up several lengths of rail . . .
There were no wagons at Ardfert to be picked up and the train did not stop. It came on towards the culvert at a speed of about thirty miles an hour. In addition to the engine and guard’s van, it consisted of twenty-six wagons. At the broken section of the line the engine was derailed. It toppled down a steep embankment on the right-hand side of the track and carried with it seventeen wagons.
The guard, on feeling the first shock, applied his brakes, with the result that nine of the wagons and his own van kept the line and stopped. He himself was knocked against the sides of the van, and suffered from bruises and from shock. When he had recovered somewhat from the shock, he hurried out to the assistance of the driver and the fireman.
Creeping down the embankment, he saw the wreckage and the engine lying on its side. He called the driver’s name, but got no answer. Crowley, the fireman, was lying badly scalded near the engine . . .
Steam and boiling water were issuing from the engine. The guard pulled the fireman beyond their range, and then looked for the driver. He saw the poor man’s legs stretched out from the footplate, but the remainder of his body had been pinned beneath the engine’s hood. He tried to pull him out, but could not move him, and concluded that he was already dead.
The guard then went towards the milesman’s house. The milesman, who by this time had been released, was coming to his help, and met him on the way. They carried the fireman, Crowley, to the milesman’s house, sent to Tralee for help, and hurried messengers to Ardfert for a doctor and a priest. Before the doctor came, however, the driver was beyond all human aid.
Soldiers from Tralee brought out an ambulance, and with much difficulty got the engine driver’s body from beneath the engine, and took it and the fireman to Tralee Infirmary. The fireman, though terribly scalded, was still conscious. He lingered until two o’clock yesterday morning, when he died.
The dead engine driver, Patrick O’Riordan, of Tralee, was fifty years of age. He leaves a widow and five children. Daniel Crowley, the fireman, was aged 36. He was the sole support of his widowed mother and of his widowed sister and five children.
http://url.ie/4n4n