The worst rail crash ever to occur in Great
Britain, in terms of loss of life, took place early on the morning of 22nd
May 1915, nearly a year after the outbreak of World War I. The site of the
crash was Quintinshill signal box, a mile and a half north of Gretna Green, on
the border between England and Scotland and on the main west coast line that
connects London to Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Events leading to the crash
Express trains travelling the whole length
of the line could easily suffer delays, and that was the case with the train
that had left London Euston shortly before midnight. It was half an hour late
when it reached Carlisle and so the decision was made to allow a local train to
run ahead of it, rather than behind, and to stop in the loop at Quintinshill to
allow the express to pass. Quintinshill had two such loops, on the up and down
lines, which were in full view of the signal box.
This procedure was quite common, and it
presented an opportunity for the signalman who should have started work at
Quintinshill at 6.00am to delay his start until 6.30am. Instead of walking from
his home at Gretna he could wait for the local train which he knew was going to
stop right outside the signal box as opposed to running on to the next station.
This was an unofficial and unauthorised
arrangement and it meant that the outgoing signalman (George Meakin) had to
write down all the train movements that took place after 6.00am on a slip of
paper so that the incoming signalman (James Tinsley) could write them into the
train register when he arrived. The register would therefore have entries for
the relevant times in the expected handwriting.
One movement that had taken place during
that half hour was that a down (i.e. northbound) goods train had been shunted
into the down loop, which meant that the passenger train on which Tinsley had
travelled had to reverse across on to the up (southbound) main line to clear
the down main for the express.
Shortly after this, and at the time when
Tinsley was climbing the steps to the signal box, a train of empty coal wagons
arrived on the up line. This could not be sent on to Carlisle, so Meakin turned
it into the up loop.
At the time of the changeover between
signalmen there were therefore three trains standing outside the signal box,
with only the down main being clear.
Mistakes that led to disaster
George Meakin (the signalman who was about
to end his shift) made a mistake by not protecting the up main line by placing
a collar on the relevant signal lever. This would have made it impossible for
the lever to be pulled and the line therefore cleared.
The signal box was now occupied by the two
signalmen and the brakemen from the two goods trains that were waiting in the
loops. Meakin read the newspaper that Tinsley had brought with him and Tinsley
started to copy the entries from Meakin’s piece of paper into the train
register. Clearly, nobody was giving proper attention to the job in hand as
they chatted about this and that.
Next to arrive was George Hutchinson, the
fireman of the local train that was waiting on the up main line. Under “Rule
55” it was his task to remind the signalman in person that his train was
stopped and thus to ensure that it was duly protected. Meakin handed him a pencil
so that he could sign the book that registered his compliance with the rule,
but Hutchinson left the box without noticing that the relevant signal lever did
not have a collar on it.
James Tinsley meanwhile got on with
business by accepting the delayed down express, and he also, inexplicably,
accepted an up troop train and set the signals for it. This was only possible
because one of the signalmen (and it was disputed who this was) must have
indicated to the Kirkpatrick box (the next one up the line) that the line was
clear after the coal wagons train had been parked in the up loop. The Kirkpatrick
signalman would not have offered the troop train if he had been aware that the
line was not clear.
The crash
As it was, the troop train duly arrived at
speed and crashed into the stationary local train. The force of the impact was
such that a train of 15 carriages that was more than 200 yards long was
instantly reduced to one of less than 70 yards in length.
The down express, which weighed more than
600 tons, then arrived and crashed into the wreckage that had spread across all
the tracks. Fire broke out and raged furiously, fuelled by the high pressure
gas used to provide light and heat on the troop train. The fire burned for more
than 24 hours, leaving very little behind.
The troop train had been taking 500
soldiers belonging to the 7th Battalion of the Royal Scots to
Liverpool, where they were due to embark for the Gallipoli campaign. It is not
known exactly how many were killed because the battalion roll was lost in the
crash, but it is estimated that at least 215 officers and men died and at least
as many were injured. None of the survivors were deemed fit to carry on to
their destination.
Casualties on the other trains were much
lower, with eight deaths on the express and two on the local train. One reason
for the huge toll on the troop train was that wartime conditions meant that old
railway stock was pressed into service, this being constructed mainly from wood
and with old-fashioned gas lighting.
The aftermath
As this was wartime, news of the disaster
was hushed up as much as possible and it was not until after the war was over
that the general public got to hear about it. Knowledge of a disaster of this
kind on the home front would hardly have helped to boost morale.
The blame for the crash clearly belonged to
the two signalmen, both of whom served jail sentences after a criminal trial.
George Hutchinson was also charged with negligence for leaving the signal box
without ensuring the safety of his train, but he was acquitted.
There have been many serious accidents on
Britain’s railways in the years since Quintinshill, but fortunately none that
have had such devastating consequences. The technology to prevent such an
accident occurring (i.e. the electric block system) already existed in 1915 but
the war had prevented it from being adopted universally across the network.
Needless to say, that is not the case today.
© John Welford
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