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The Quintinshill rail disaster was a multi-train rail crash which occurred on 22 May 1915 outside the Quintinshill signal box near Gretna Green in Dumfriesshire, Scotland. It resulted in the deaths of over 200 people and remains the worst rail disaster in British history.
The Hawes Junction rail crash occurred at 5.49 am on 24 December 1910, just north of Lunds Viaduct between Hawes Junction and Aisgill on the Midland Railway's Settle and Carlisle main line in the North Riding of Yorkshire, 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 Wednesday 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 Charfield railway disaster was a fatal train crash which occurred on 13 October 1928 in the village of Charfield in the English county of Gloucestershire. The London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) Leeds to Bristol night mail train failed to stop at the signals protecting the down refuge siding at Charfield railway station. The weather was misty, but there was not a sufficiently thick fog for the signalman at Charfield to employ fog signalmen. A freight train was in the process of being shunted from the down main line to the siding, and another train of empty goods wagons was passing through the station from the Bristol (up) direction.
Over the latter years of the 19th and early years of the 20th centuries, Penistone in Yorkshire gained a name as an accident black-spot on Britain's railway network; indeed, it could be said to hold the title of the worst accident black-spot in the country. The main line through the town was the Woodhead route of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway between Sheffield Victoria and Manchester, London Road. The line was heavily graded with a summit some 400 yards inside the eastern portal of the Woodhead tunnel.
The 1892 Thirsk rail crash happened at Manor House signal box on 2 November 1892, on the North Eastern Railway about 3 miles (4.8 km) north of Thirsk railway station in the North Riding of Yorkshire, England.
The Winwick rail crash took place at Winwick Junction, near Warrington on the London, Midland and Scottish Railway, on 28 September 1934. Two trains collided, resulting in 11 deaths and 19 injured.
The Clayton Tunnel rail crash occurred on Sunday 25 August 1861, five miles (8 km) from Brighton on the south coast of England. At the time it was the worst accident on the British railway system. A train ran into the back of another inside the tunnel, killing 23 and injuring 176 passengers.
The Ais Gill rail accident occurred on the Settle–Carlisle line in Northwest England on 2 September 1913. Two long trains were both ascending a steep gradient with some difficulty, because their engines generated barely enough power to carry the load. When the first train stopped to build-up steam pressure, the driver and fireman of the second train were distracted by maintenance routines, and failed to observe the warning signals. The collision wrecked several carriages, which were then engulfed by flammable gas, killing 16 people and injuring 38.
Two rail accidents have occurred near Castlecary, Scotland. One of these was in 1937 and one in 1968. Both events involved rear-end collisions, and caused the deaths of 35 and 2 people respectively.
The Radstock rail accident took place on the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway in south west England, on 7 August 1876. Two trains collided on a single track section, resulting in fifteen passengers being killed.
There was a rail crash near Welwyn Garden City railway station in Hertfordshire, England, in 1935 which killed fourteen people, and another in 1957 with one fatality.
The Abbots Ripton rail disaster occurred on 21 January 1876 at Abbots Ripton, then in the county of Huntingdonshire, England, on the Great Northern Railway main line, previously thought to be exemplary for railway safety. In the accident, the Special Scotch Express train from Edinburgh to London was involved in a collision, during a blizzard, with a coal train. An express travelling in the other direction then ran into the wreckage. The initial accident was caused by:
The Seer Green rail crash occurred on the morning of 11 December 1981 near Seer Green, Buckinghamshire, England between two four-car Class 115 diesel multiple units, killing one driver and three passengers.
The Knowle and Dorridge rail crash was a fatal rail crash that occurred at Dorridge railway station in the West Midlands, England, on 15 August 1963. Three people died in the crash after a signalman's error routed a small freight train into the path of an express passenger train which slowed but could not stop before colliding with it.
The accident at St Bedes Junction was one of several serious accidents in 1915. It featured a double collision and fire fuelled by gas, characteristics shared by a much worse accident that year at Quintinshill. There were also similarities in that a signalman was unaware of the presence of a train near his signal box and rules were not observed. The accident is sometimes referred to as the Jarrow railway disaster as there was no station at Bede and Jarrow was then the nearest place of importance.
The Kirtlebridge rail crash took place in 1872 at Kirtlebridge railway station in Dumfriesshire. An express passenger train ran into a goods train that was shunting; 11 people lost their lives immediately, and one further person succumbed later. The cause was a failure to communicate between the station master in charge of the shunting operation, and the signalman. There was not full interlocking of the points, and the block system of signalling was not in use.
References
- 1 2 3 4 Rich, Capt F H (1866). Accident Returns (PDF). Board of Trade.
- 1 2 3 Rolt, L.T.C. (1976). Red for Danger. Pan. ISBN 0-330-25555-X.
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