On a frosty Boxing day in 1870 the driver of the 16:25 from London King's Cross to Peterborough noticed an 'uneasy oscillation' as he passed over Marshmoor level crossing, 2 miles south of Hatfield station. He peered back and discovered he had lost his train and pulled up. He reversed back, preceded by his fireman on foot showing a red light. They were met by the white-faced guard who told them there had been a disaster. The driver reversed direction again and sped to Hatfield to warn oncoming traffic and summon help.
King's Cross railway station, also known as London King's Cross, is a passenger railway terminus in the London Borough of Camden, on the edge of Central London. It is in the London station group, one of the busiest stations in the United Kingdom and the southern terminus of the East Coast Main Line to North East England and Scotland. Adjacent to King's Cross station is St Pancras International, the London terminus for Eurostar services to continental Europe. Beneath both main line stations is King's Cross St. Pancras tube station on the London Underground; combined they form one of the country's largest transport hubs.
Peterborough railway station serves the city of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, England. It is 76 miles 29 chains (122.9 km) down the East Coast Main Line from London King's Cross.
Hatfield railway station serves the town of Hatfield in Hertfordshire, England. The station is managed by Great Northern. It is 17 miles 54 chains (28.4 km) measured from London King's Cross on the East Coast Main Line.
It transpired that as the train approached the crossing the left hand leading wheel of the van at the front of the train had disintegrated and the coupling between the van and the locomotive had parted and the van and two following coaches had run off the rails onto the roadway demolishing a wall, and the crossing gates and posts and killing the mother and sister of a signalman who were waiting at the crossing. In addition six passengers in the two coaches were killed.
The accident inspector criticized the method of tyre fixing and recommended, not for the first time, the use of Mansell composite wheels on passenger rolling stock.
The Mansell Wheel is a railway wheel patented by Richard Mansell, the Carriage and Wagon superintendent of the South Eastern Railway in the UK. The design was created in the 1840s and was eventually widely used on passenger railway stock in the UK. This is an interesting example of a composite wooden wheel, using the same principle as an artillery wheel but with a solid wooden centre instead of spokes. The drawing (right) is from an old railway design book from the early 20th Century.
Lionel Thomas Caswall Rolt was a prolific English writer and the biographer of major civil engineering figures including Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Thomas Telford. He is also regarded as one of the pioneers of the leisure cruising industry on Britain's inland waterways, and as an enthusiast for both vintage cars and heritage railways.
The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a numeric commercial book identifier which is intended to be unique. Publishers purchase ISBNs from an affiliate of the International ISBN Agency.
‡ indicates railway accidents and incidents resulting in at least 20 fatalities 1900–1999
Related Research Articles
The Armagh rail disaster happened on 12 June 1889 near Armagh, Ulster, Ireland, when a crowded Sunday school excursion train had to negotiate a steep incline; the steam locomotive was unable to complete the climb and the train stalled. The train crew decided to divide the train and take forward the front portion, leaving the rear portion on the running line. The rear portion was inadequately braked and ran back down the gradient, colliding with a following train.
The Ufton Nervet rail crash was a collision between a train and car near Ufton Nervet, Berkshire, England, in 2004. Seven people, including the drivers of the train and the car, were killed.
The Great Heck rail crash, also called the Selby rail crash, was a high-speed train accident that occurred at Great Heck near Selby, North Yorkshire, England on the morning of 28 February 2001. An InterCity 225 passenger train operated by GNER travelling from Newcastle to London collided with a Land Rover Defender which had crashed down a motorway embankment onto the railway line; it was subsequently derailed into the path of an oncoming freight train at an estimated closing speed of 142 mph (229 km/h). Ten people died in the resultant collision, including the drivers of both trains involved, and 82 others suffered serious injuries. It remains the worst rail disaster of the 21st century in the United Kingdom.
The Southall rail crash occurred on 19 September 1997, on the Great Western Main Line at Southall, west London. An InterCity 125 passenger train failed to slow down in response to warning signals and collided with a freight train crossing its path, causing seven deaths and 139 injuries.
The Colwich rail crash occurred on the evening of Friday 19 September 1986 at Colwich Junction, Staffordshire, England. It was significant in that it was a high speed collision between two packed express trains. One driver was killed, but no passengers were killed, because of the great strength of the rolling stock involved, which included examples of Mk1, Mk2 and Mk3 coaches.
The Invergowrie rail accident happened at Invergowrie, Scotland on 22 October 1979. The accident killed 5 people and injured 51 others.
The Hawes Junction rail crash occurred at 5.49 am on 24 December 1910, just north of the Lunds viaduct between Hawes Junction and Aisgill on the Midland Railway's Settle and Carlisle main line in Westmorland, England. It was caused when a busy signalman, Alfred Sutton, forgot about a pair of light engines waiting at his down (northbound) starting signal to return to their shed at Carlisle. They were still waiting there when the signalman set the road for the down Scotch express. When the signal cleared, the light engines set off in front of the express into the same block section. Since the light engines were travelling at low speed from a stand at Hawes Junction, and the following express was travelling at high speed, a collision was inevitable. The express caught the light engines just after Moorcock Tunnel near Aisgill summit in Mallerstang and was almost wholly derailed.
The Abermule train collision was a head-on collision which occurred at Abermule, Montgomeryshire, Wales on 26 January 1921, killing 17 people. The crash arose from misunderstandings between staff which effectively over-rode the safe operation of the Electric Train Tablet system protecting the single line. A train departed carrying the wrong tablet for the section it was entering and collided with a train coming the other way.
The Staplehurst rail crash was a derailment at Staplehurst, Kent on 9 June 1865 at 3:13 pm. The South Eastern Railway Folkestone to London boat train derailed while crossing a viaduct where a length of track had been removed during engineering works, killing ten passengers and injuring forty. In the Board of Trade report it was found that a man had been placed with a red flag 554 yards (507 m) away but the regulations required him to be 1,000 yards (910 m) away and the train had insufficient time to stop.
In Lockington, England on 26 July 1986, the 09:33 passenger train from Bridlington to Kingston upon Hull on the Hull to Scarborough Line struck a passenger van on a level crossing.
The 1984 Eccles rail crash occurred on 4 December 1984 at Eccles, Greater Manchester, when an express passenger train collided at speed with the rear of a freight train of oil tankers. The driver of the express and two passengers were killed, and 68 people were injured. The cause of the accident was determined to be that the driver of the express train had passed a signal at danger.
The North Eastern Railway (NER) Bogie Tank Passenger (BTP) locomotives were designed by Edward Fletcher in 1873. The locomotives were for hauling passenger services on branch lines. They had an 0-4-4 wheel layout and a total of 124 locomotives were built. They were designated G6 by the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER).
The Lichfield rail crash was a rail crash which occurred on New Year's Day 1946 at Lichfield Trent Valley station in Staffordshire, England. 20 people were killed in the accident, caused when a points failure routed a goods train into the back of a stationary passenger train waiting at the station. This event is the basis for a story in the Railway Series by Rev. W. Awdry.
The Round Oak railway accident happened on 23 August 1858 between Brettell Lane and Round Oak railway stations, on the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway. The breakage of a defective coupling caused seventeen coaches and one brake van, containing about 450 passengers, of an excursion train to run backwards down the steep gradient between the stations, colliding with a following second portion of the excursion. 14 passengers were killed and 50 injured in the disaster. In the words of the Board of Trade accident inspector, Captain H. W. Tyler, it was at the time "decidedly the worst railway accident that has ever occurred in this country".
The Wigan rail crash was a railway accident which occurred at Wigan North Western station, England, to a northbound excursion train in the very early morning of 3 August 1873. Thirteen passengers were killed after derailed carriages collided with station buildings.
The 1915 Ilford rail crash occurred on 1 January 1915 when an express passenger train passed a signal at danger and collided with another passenger train that was stopped at Ilford railway station on the Great Eastern Main Line in Essex, England. Ten people were killed and approximately 500 complained of injury.
The Slough rail accident happened on 16 June 1900 at Slough railway station on the Great Western Main Line when an express train from Paddington to Falmouth Docks ran through two sets of signals at danger, and collided with a local train heading for Windsor. Five passengers were killed; 35 were seriously injured, and 90 complained of shock or minor injuries
This is a list of significant Railway Accidents in Queensland, Australia.
The Ballymacarrett rail crash occurred on 10 January 1945 at 7:50am in the Ballymacarrett area of Belfast, County Down, Northern Ireland on the Belfast to Bangor Line of the Belfast and County Down Railway, when a train led by a heavy autotrain driving trailer ran into the back of a stopped passenger train consisting of lightweight wooden coaches. 22 died with 27 injured. It was the worst crash in Northern Ireland since 1889. The cause was found to be carelessness of the driver of the autotrain who was running too fast for conditions. Fog, unsafe railway rules, and possible distraction from passengers all may have contributed to the accident. Old lightweight rolling stock contributed to the great number of injuries and deaths. The accident led to the demise of the railway which was nationalised three years later.
On 4 January 2018, a passenger train operated by Shosholoza Meyl collided with a truck on a level crossing at Geneva Station between Hennenman and Kroonstad, Free State, South Africa. The train was derailed and seven of the twelve carriages caught fire. Twenty-one people were killed and 254 people were injured.
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