25th November – East Coast Main Line disasters – Adrian Gray

New Southgate

Adrian’s theme was accidents on the ECML, going back to 1857. By his own admission, Adrian is more of a general historian than a railway enthusiast but he was moved to take an interest in this subject by frequent trips on the ECML from Retford to London. Although the scope was wide-ranging, this was not a simple catalogue of accidents, as he had chosen to describe, albeit briefly, a number of accidents which had features of interest including learning points for the railways. Many of us will be familiar with Tom Rolt’s “Red for Danger” and other works, but perhaps the majority of the accidents described (“disaster” is probably not the right word for many of them but this is a talk which Adrian gives usually to non-enthusiast bodies) were new to your reporter.

There were too many accidents described in the talk to list here but for illustration, Morpeth has had more than its fair share of accidents, due apparently to the sharp curve at this point, and the first one described was in 1877. Adrian mentioned the two accidents at Goswick. In case audience members were wondering like your reporter what the inverted chassis of the loco shown in a photo of the 1907 accident was, it was a NER Class S 4-6-0 No 2005, LNER Class B13. The loco ended upside down in the soft earth of a drain, buried up to the footplate, giving the impression that the boiler had been removed. Other less well-known accidents included Barkston Junction in 1874 and a low speed derailment at Bridge Junction, Doncaster in 1951, the latter resulting in 14 passenger fatalities due to the third coach being crushed against a pier of Barlby Bridge. The train involved was hauled by the rebuilt A2/2 “Cock o’ the North”. The conclusion was that the accident was due to deficiencies in the rather complicated scissors crossover which the train took to gain the Up Main from Platform 4 and where the derailment occurred, possibly exacerbated by drivers (including this one) not adhering to the 10mph speed restriction at this crossing.

The talk was entertaining although it was not possible covering so many accidents to deal with any in great depth. Perhaps audience members, like your reporter, went home to pull the reports from Railways Archive to learn more.

We had an audience of 37 of whom 12 were non-members.