Six Killed in Japan When Train Plunges Off Bridge

TOKYO —  An excursion train that had just let off its 180 passengers was hit by gale-force winds and plunged 135 feet off a bridge onto a factory Sunday, killing six people and injuring six, police said.

Six of the train’s eight cars fell “like match boxes . . . one after another, starting with the last car,” one witness said.

An official of Japan National railways, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said a wind gust of about 55 m.p.h. hit the train and apparently knocked it off the Amarube Bridge between two hills near Hamasaka, on the coast of the Sea of Japan about 300 miles west of Tokyo.

Processing Plant Destroyed

Five of the dead and three of the injured were among 12 people working in a crab-meat processing plant below the bridge, said a police official on the scene. The plant was destroyed and a nearby unoccupied house was damaged, he said.

The train was on an excursion from Fukuchiyama, 50 miles east of Hamasaka. The official said four of the five crew members were in cars that fell. He said a 54-year-old conductor was killed and three food service workers were injured.

He quoted the fifth crewman, motorman Yuji Koniya, 39, as saying that his diesel locomotive stopped suddenly, and when he looked back, he saw no train cars.

Bridge Wasn’t Damaged

But the official said that part of one car remained on the 1,020-foot-long bridge along with the locomotive.

The cars fell minutes after 180 passengers got off the train at a nearby station to buy local seafood, rail officials said. The train was going to another station to wait before turning around to pick up the passengers for the return trip four hours later, they said.

A railroad official said the Amarube Bridge was not damaged by the wind. The bridge, designed by U.S. engineer P. L. Wolfel of Philadelphia and Japanese engineer Seiichi Furukawa, was built in 1911 and is the highest railroad bridge in Japan.

The railroad has had 16 other accidents attributed to wind. In 1899, a typhoon blew seven train cars off a bridge over a river in Yaita, north of Tokyo, killing 20 people and injuring 45 others, the official said.