There was some damage to the engines albeit minor. Some of the carriages were reduced to little more than tinder.
And the train wasn't being pulled by two engines.
On that day, a lot of people had travelled to Hunstanton. When it came for them to return, the train organisers decided rather than one long train pulled by two engines, they would have two trains each pulled by one engine. They would leave 15 minutes apart.
The first train would stop at 5 station, the express (later) one only two.
About two miles from Lynn, the driver of the first train saw a bullock on the line and sounded his whistle. The bullock jumped out of the way but an employee of the train company who was riding in the engine said that would cause an accident. The driver was duty bound to report this when he got in to Lynn but could find no one in officialdom, it being nearby night. The other train was less than 10 minutes behind.
The driver saw the bullock in the gloom but it was too late and the train hit the animal which passed under the train. The first four carriages felt a bump as the carcass scraped the underside but by a quirk of design, the axles of the next carriage were lower than the preceeding ones and they hit the bullock, derailing them and the next four or five carriages before the train came to a halt.
The train company was found negligent at the coroners inquest for not warning the second train (it's likely that by the time the first arrived at Lynn, the second was moments away from the accident): they were also found nothing to have maintained the upkeep of the carriages - the first and second class carriages didn't suffer much damage and we're reusable but the 3rd class were of much poorer construction resulting in the deaths: and the train company was also found to have not been compliant in maintaining the fencing along the line to keep animals off. They had been warned and had started to put better fences up but it seems that they didn't do so with much enthusiasm of speed.
The inquest also found that the government had been lax in allowing trains to proceed with poorly maintained fencing. However, after another victim died and a separate inquest was ordered on her, all the findings of the first were agreed with, apart from this last one.
By the way, in these parts it's called the Hunstanton crash. It actually occurred about a mile north of the village of Gaywood, now a part of Kings Lynn.