#rail disaster

[scotianostra]

December 28th 1906 saw the rail disaster at Elliott Junction, near Arbroath, killing 22.

About 3.30pm on the fateful day, a local train heading from Arbroath was struck from behind by a North British Railway train which was also heading south with its tender in front, the driver George Gourlay having decided to turn around the Edinburgh to Aberdeen express because snow was blocking the line north of Arbroath.

An earlier derailment had rendered the line down to a single track, though that information was not passed to Gourlay due to signal box problems which also affected the signals themselves.

Running as a special train intended to stop at all local stops between Arbroath and Dundee, the express caught up with the local train which had left Arbroath 10 minutes before, but had been forced to stop at Elliot Hill Junction because of a train ahead of it on the single line.

Gourlay would later claim he was unable to see the signals in the “danger” position and added that he was only driving at 12 to 14 mph – other witnesses said much quicker – when his train smashed into the local train.

In all some 22 people died, 15 passengers and seven staff including the local train guard. Passengers assisted in the rescue, helping to free injured people – eight were seriously injured and 16 suffered less serious injuries.

Liberal MP for Banffshire Alexander William Black was severely injured and he died the following day. He was 47-years-old. Gourlay suffered a head injury but some witnesses said they smelled drink on his breath.

Arbroath FC player Dev Cargill was one who rushed to the scene and he helped get injured people out of the wreckage, but in the severe cold he caught a chill and died a few days later. His death is not included in the final toll.

Major JW Pringle was appointed to lead a public inquiry and his report was published the next year. He was in no doubt that Gourlay was chiefly to blame but there were mitigating circumstances. The question was whether Gourlay drinking whisky had affected his driving ability.

Pringle wrote: “He [Gourlay] was accustomed to work his train from Arbroath to Dundee as an express, without stopping at an intermediate stations. It is possible that he did not fully understand the special instructions given to him on this occasion.

“Confusion of ideas or deadening of faculties may account for his conduct. The evidence suggests no cause for such confusion, or lack of alertness, other than the bemusing effects of either extreme cold, or of alcohol. The cold, admittedly severe, more especially in the unprotected position of tender first, could hardly, in so short a time as two or three minutes, have alone produced such a serious effect on a robust constitution.

“I have therefore, most reluctantly, been forced to accept the alternative, and give it as my opinion that the lack of intelligence, or of caution and alertness, displayed by driver Gourlay on this occasion were in part at all events induced by drink, the effects of which may possibly have been accentuated, after he left Arbroath, by exposure to weather.”

Gourlay was charged with culpable homicide, the initial charge sheet stating that he had “driven the train in a reckless and culpable manner, whereby it came into contact with another passenger train and killed a number of passengers”.

A jury at the High Court in Edinburgh found him guilty but recommended leniency and he was sentenced to five months imprisonment, reduced to three months on appeal after 92,000 people signed a petition to free him. The North British company defended their driver loyally and he returned to work for them.

[alanshemper]

Railroaded. The Norfolk Southern Disaster in East Palestine, Ohio. Part One.

Rail workers warned us about a preventable disaster like this.

“Rail workers warned us about a preventable disaster like this.”

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

Aftermath of the Spanish River rail derailment, January 22, 1910.

[pray-for-the-death-of-allah-blog]

Also White Conservative who think it’s only the Aboriginal who can get affected by oil company and not some white folk in some village who loose 47 people because oil company wanted to make it cheaper so instead of 3 people to control a 80 wagon of petrol, they decided to let only one person control the train and when one of the employee filled a repport to say what was wrong with the train, the CEO of that oil company told him politely to fuck off.  :)))

[scotianostra]

May 22nd 1915, was a tragic day for Scotland when 227 people are killed and 246 more injured in a rail crash at Quintinshill, near Gretna Green.

Just before 7am, on the outskirts of Gretna Green, railway signalmen made a fatal error of judgement. A local train travelling north had been ordered to stop at the junction, but found itself now lying in the path of a southbound troop train carrying soldiers from the 7th Royal Scots.

Carrying 500 men, the troop train approached the junction at high speed and crashed into the stationary passenger service. Little more than a minute later, another passenger service travelling northbound collided with the smouldering wreckage of the first two trains.

Scattered around the junction, the mangled wrecks quickly caught fire, fuelled by the gas-based lighting system used on board the troop train.

Frantic efforts to rescue survivors began immediately after the crash, with stunned survivors and locals working to save passengers still trapped in the smouldering wreckage as the fire spread.

Survivor accounts of the rescue operation are particularly harrowing. In 1985, Peter Stoddard, a survivor of the incident, told a reporter for The Guardian that officers were “shooting men trapped in the burning wreckage” that could not be saved.

Over 220 people were killed in the Quintinshill disaster and hundreds more were injured. The exact number of deaths still remains unknown, as some bodies were never recovered due to the scale and intensity of the fire.

The majority of those killed in the Quintinshill rail disaster were men of the Royal Scots, which recorded 216 deaths. Only 83 of the bodies were ever identified.

Notably, this battalion was comprised largely of men from the Leith, Musselburgh and Portobello areas.

Raised during the early days of the First World War and known as ‘Leith’s Own’, the 7th had spent time training near Falkirk in the days preceding the disaster. Boarding that fateful train, the battalion was due to travel to Liverpool and would have eventually found itself fighting in Gallipoli.

In the wake of the disaster, the bodies of the Royal Scots soldiers were brought back to Leith and placed in the battalion drill hall, located on Dalmeny Street.

While some of the soldiers were buried in private ceremonies, 107 men were buried with full military honours at Rosebank cemetery in Pilrig.

Thousands of locals lined the streets of Leith to watch the funeral procession, the route of which was lined by more than 3,000 men of the 15th and 16th Royal Scots battalions.

An inquiry into the cause of the crash ruled that a number of procedural failings had contributed to the incident. In particular, the inquiry attributed much of the blame to two signalmen on duty at Quintinshill that morning.

Both were charged with manslaughter and convicted of culpable homicide following a trial in Scotland. They were later released in 1916.

Pics are from a visit to Rosebank Cemetery on this day 2023.

[scotianostra]

Just after 7pm on December 28th 1879 the Tay Bridge disaster occurred.

The first Tay Rail Bridge collapsed while a train was passing over it from Wormit to Dundee, killing all aboard.

At the time, a gale estimated at Beaufort force 10/11 was blowing down the Tay estuary at right angles to the bridge. The collapse of the bridge, only opened 19 months and passed safe by the Board of Trade, sent shock waves through the Victorian engineering profession and general public.

The disaster is one of the most famous bridge failures and to date it is still one of the worst structural engineering failures in the British Isles.

The first Tay rail bridge was completed in February 1878 to the design of Thomas Bouch. Bouch was responsible for the design, construction and maintenance of the bridge. Most of his bridges were lattice girders supported on slender cast iron columns braced with wrought iron struts and ties, such as the Belah Viaduct in the photograph to the right. The building of the Tay bridge culminated in him being knighted. 

The Tay bridge was nearly two miles long, consisting of 85 spans and at the time was the longest bridge in the world. The spans carried a single rail track; 72 of these were supported on spanning girders below the level of the track; the remaining 13 navigation spans were spanning girders above the level of the track (i.e. the train runs through a tunnel of girders).

These "high girders", as they were known, were 27 ft high with an 88 ft clearance above the high water mark. It was these spans which fell. Most of the girders below track level, all of which remained standing, were transferred to the present Tay rail bridge. At the time of the collapse Bouch was working on the design of the proposed Forth Bridge. In consequence, the design of the bridge was transferred to Benjamin Baker and Sir John Fowler.

A Court of Inquiry was set up to try and ascertain the reason for the collapse of the bridge. The Court of Inquiry report concluded that, "The fall of the bridge was occasioned by the insufficiency of the cross bracing and its fastenings to sustain the force of the gale." The Court of Inquiry indicated that if the piers, and in particular the wind bracing, had been properly constructed and maintained, the bridge could have withstood the storm that night, albeit with a low factor of safety - 4 to 5 was the norm at the time.

A Court of Inquiry was set up to try and ascertain the reason for the collapse of the bridge. The Court of Inquiry report concluded that, "The fall of the bridge was occasioned by the insufficiency of the cross bracing and its fastenings to sustain the force of the gale." The Court of Inquiry indicated that if the piers, and in particular the wind bracing, had been properly constructed and maintained, the bridge could have withstood the storm that night, albeit with a low factor of safety - 4 to 5 was the norm at the time.

Sir Thomas Bouch was held chiefly to blame for the collapse in not making adequate allowance for wind loading. He used a wind pressure of 10 lbsf/sq ft for the design of the Tay bridge. It is interesting to note that when working on the design of a proposed Forth bridge he used 30lbsf/sq ft. To this day, however, there is still speculation as to the fundamental cause and as to whether or not the designer, Thomas Bouch, was to blame. You can find a modern re-appraisal of the disaster HERE.

Apart from the results of the original Court of Inquiry, various theories have been put proposed to explain the collapse.

The last two pictures shows the present Tay Rail bridge, the first shows the pier remains of Bouch's bridge alongside it. It is a very emotive site and provides a grim reminder of the disaster. The wrought iron girders which remained standing after the disaster were transferred onto the present bridge where they are still in use today.

[scotianostra]

On December 28th 1879 the Tay Bridge disaster occurred.

The Tay Bridge Disaster claimed as many as 75 lives. Experts continue to debate why the first Tay Rail Bridge – which was built only the previous year – plunged into the river, taking a train and its passengers with it. Many theories have been put forward as to the precise cause of the accident, but it is thought that the strong gale-force winds which battered Scotland on December 28th contributed.

Designed by Sir Thomas Bouch, the bridge was at the time seen as a marvel of engineering, however its collapse persuaded the authorities to ditch Bouch’s design for the Forth Bridge and give it to Sir Benjamin Baker and Sir John Fowler.

While inquiries have highlighted structural failings, Bouch claimed that the collapse may have been the result of the train derailing and colliding with the girders. However, his case fell on unsympathetic ears.

The pics show the bridge before and after the collapse, and three memorials, made up of granite panels on the Dundee and Fife sides of the bridge that  tell the story of the 1879 disaster and list the known dead.

William McGonagall’s The Tay Bridge Disaster is perhaps the most famous ‘literary work’ associated with the incident.

[scotianostra]

December 28th 1906 saw the rail disaster at Elliott Junction, near Arbroath, killing 22.

Snow had caused a signal to droop, indicating the line was clear and a southbound express train, travelling tender-first, ran into a derailed goods train.

A Dundee and Arbroath Railway train was standing at Elliot Junction railway station during a blizzard when it was hit by a North British Railway train.

The Board of Trade Inquiry placed primary responsibility on the driver of one of the trains who had “failed to heed instructions to drive with caution”. It also discussed the role of alcohol and said that “the proximity of the Victoria Bar to the up platform is a very undesirable feature in the surroundings of [Arbroath] station. The substitution of a coffee shop and refreshment room would be greatly in the general interests of the staff”.

Thirteen people were killed instantly on the local train but the death toll increased to 22 with eight injured, one of those injured in the crash was the Liberal Member of Parliament Alexander William Black, who died of his injuries shortly afterwards.

A further fatality was Arbroath footballer David ‘Dev’ Smith Cargill ran from his home in South Street to Elliot junction when word reached the town of a devastating rail disaster.

During his efforts ‘Dev’ was working among ice as well as a boiling hot train which gave him a serious chill and he subsequently died shortly afterwards.

Initially, the driver was arrested and appeared before a sheriff at Dundee charged with being intoxicated and then released on bail, he went on trial at the High Court in Edinburgh on March 11th, 1907, on a culpable homicide indictment.

There was no mention of the charge of intoxication.

He was found guilty but due to his unblemished character, the weather and lax infrastructure, he was recommended for the utmost leniency and given five months in prison.