Railway accident in the Clayton Tunnel

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
North portal of the Clayton Tunnel

The railway accident in the Clayton Tunnel was the collision of two passenger trains in the railway tunnel on August 25, 1861. 23 people died, around 176 were mostly seriously injured. This was the worst railway accident in British history at the time.

Technical conditions

The Clayton Tunnel, about 2 km long, is on the Brighton Main Line , 7 km from Brighton . Apart from the Clayton Tunnel, the route was driven at intervals . A minimum interval of 5 minutes was prescribed. The passage through the tunnel, on the other hand, was specially secured: Here the route was secured with a block signal in front of each portal , which could be operated by a route attendant as well as being put on "stop" by an incoming train for a subsequent train . Should this mechanism fail, an alarm bell was triggered and the track keeper had to signal a possibly following train with the flag "Halt". This ensured that there was always only one train on the track . The track keepers communicated with one another with a simple telegraph . The guard at the southern tunnel entrance was on a 24-hour shift and had been on duty for more than 18 hours when the accident occurred.

procedure

The first special train

On the day of the accident, two special trains ran from Brighton before a scheduled passenger train . The trains left the station there in an interval of a few minutes northwards. The guard at the southern mouth of the tunnel became aware of a malfunction when the first special train passed, but the signal behind the train did not automatically switch to "stop" and the alarm was triggered. He immediately telegraphed his colleague at the north portal that a train was in the tunnel.

The second special train

The second train followed the first at the south portal at an interval of just three minutes. There was not enough time for the guard at the south portal to manually set the signal to "stop" in addition to the telegraphic notification of his colleague at the north portal before the second train passed it. That this followed at such a short distance was surprising for him. He ran out of the track keeper's house with the signal flag and commanded “stop” with a flag. Since the train was already passing, he assumed that the flag had not been seen by the train crew. He then asked the guard at the northern exit of the tunnel whether the train had left the tunnel. Since he knew nothing about the arrival of the second train, he related the request to the first train and confirmed that "the train" had left the tunnel.

The plan train

Thereupon the guard at the southern tunnel entrance cleared the journey for the following scheduled train into the tunnel. However, the staff of the second train had still seen the flag signal, stopped the train and pushed it back to inquire about the reason for the stop signal from the track attendant at the south portal. The two trains collided about 200 m in front of the southern tunnel entrance inside the tunnel. The last two cars of the special train - an escort car and a passenger car - were smashed by the locomotive of the plane train. This derailed and wedged itself between the tunnel walls. Most of the 23 dead were in this last of the passenger coaches of the second special train.

examination

The official investigation was carried out by HW Tyler, captain of the pioneers . The judicial proceedings ended in a guilty verdict for manslaughter against the second Brighton station master for letting the trains on the line too briefly. The two track keepers at the tunnel, however, were acquitted.

Consequences

The catastrophic consequences of a minimal communication error with high time pressure on trains following one another in close succession with an initial technical failure of the signal triggered severe criticism of a security system that was essentially based on the time interval in the train sequence . All of this could have been avoided with a route block - albeit technically and financially much more complex . Nevertheless, the consequences of the accident were not strictly drawn: It was not until the railway accident at Armagh - here too, "backwards" rolling wagons collided with a subsequent train - caused the Parliament of the United Kingdom to pass a law in the Regulation of Railways Act 1889 in 1889 , which allowed driving Prohibited in time intervals and driving in space, a train notification procedure and the signal dependency of the switches made mandatory.

The investigation also showed that the normal shift length for route guards was 18 hours. However, if they wanted to have one day off a week, they had to work 24-hour shifts. This overloading of staff in positions highly responsible for security was also criticized by the investigating officer.

Literary aftermath

The December 1866 short story The Signal-Man by Charles Dickens draws on the events of this accident.

See also

literature

  • NN: Death In The Tunnel . The Times , Aug 25, 1861, p. 10.
  • Peter R Lewis: Disaster on the Dee. Robert Stephenson's Nemesis of 1847 . Tempus 2007.
  • LTC Rolt : Red for Danger. The classic history of British railway disasters. Sutton Publishing 1998. ISBN 0-7509-2047-5

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ House of Commons Great Britain Parliament: Railways; Turnpike trusts; Miscellaneous: Accounts and Papers . In: HMSO (Ed.): Parliamentary Papers, Session 6 February - 7 August 1862 . No. Vol LIII, 1862, pp. 1793-1802.
  2. ↑ Investigation report (PDF; 1.00 MB)
  3. ^ NN: The Catastrophe On The London And Brighton Railway . The Times, Sept. 11, 1861, p. 8.
  4. ^ Rolt, p. 55.

Coordinates: 50 ° 53 ′ 44.7 "  N , 0 ° 9 ′ 45.1"  W.