Freight train in India hits and kills two elephants, Derails

Trains Magazine General Discussion
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Freight train kills 2 elephants in northeastern India[#oops]Published Friday August 10th, 2007

GAUHATI, India (AP) - Officials say two wild elephants were killed when they were hit by a freight train in India’s remote northeast Friday.

M-C Malakar, the state’s chief wildlife warden, says the elephants were knocked down while crossing the tracks along with a herd of nearly 20 pachyderms near Gauhati, Assam’s capital.

Assam state is home to more than 5,000 wild Asiatic elephants.

The train engine was derailed by the impact of the collision.

Villagers accuse train drivers of flouting a speed limit of 20 kilometres an hour in the area, known as an elephant transit route.

In 2001, six wild elephants were killed by a passenger train near Assam’s eastern oil-producing town Digboi.

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Here is another elephant item from the Railroad Gazette monthly tally of accidents:

May 1895

28th, on Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis, near Dayton, O., a car in a circus train was broken by the failure of an axle. There was an elephant in the car and the veracious reporter informs us that the blasts made by the beast were so alarming that the engineer took them for a danger signal and stopped the train.