UK News 07-10-1999 Vain Hope Of Victims` Families who: Many more feared dead what: where: PADDINGTON when: Yesterday snippet: Meanwhile the press has turned to the town of Reading where it is believed that as many of 50 of the dead - now estimated at more than 100 - boarded the train. The Reading Evening Post leads with "Our Tragedy" describing the events as "Britain`s biggest peacetime disaster". A book of condolence has been placed at the town`s Civic Centre and a requiem mass takes place in the town today. MP for Reading West Martin Salter said "There is a dark shadow hanging over Reading today. You can feel the grief and despair in the air and see it on people`s faces." A note left on the station platform at Reading by a little girl and her mother yesterday reads simply "Come home daddy, I love you. Claire." In London, sixty friends and relatives of victims visited the crash site yesterday. "As the relatives looked on, some in obvious distress," reports The Guardian, "preparations were continuing for the most difficult task of the operation so far - searching the fire-ravaged hulk of the first class coach H of the express train, in which many of the victims are thought to have perished." "They came because they had to," says The Express, "desperately trying to make sense of a national catastrophe which had torn the heart from their families. Traumatised and disbelieving, they stood in the drizzle of a grey London afternoon, beholding the cruellest of scenes, not knowing whether their loved ones were lying in Westminster mortuary or still within the tangled wreckage." Comment: The Express Elsewhere in The Express, columnist Martin Samuel asks "Where do lives figure in the cost-cutters books?" Signal 109 was known to be badly positioned and dangerous, he alleges. In the last six years, eight drivers have passed through it on red. "So why wasn`t it moved? Because, in all probability... a bean counter decided it was not worth the investment." [... more]

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