Penistone railway accident

In the railway accident at Penistone (also: accident at Bullhouse Bridge or with the location Hazlehead – Penistone ) on July 16, 1884, an express train derailed in front of Penistone station , South Yorkshire , Great Britain after an axle failure . 24 people died.

Scene of the accident in front of the Bullhouse Bridge

Starting position

An express train of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway (MS&LR) had departed on the Woodhead Line from Manchester London Road Station (today: Manchester Piccadilly Station ) at 12:30 p.m. to King's Cross Station in London , where it was supposed to arrive at 17:20 p.m. . As a connection to evening ship departures, he also brought through coaches to Grimsby Docks station . The train was equipped with a suction air brake according to the Smith system ( Smith's brake ). This did not yet work automatically, based on the principle that the brakes applied when air flowed into the brake system, i.e. emergency braking automatically took place if the brake line ruptured. Rather, the engine driver had to actively create the negative pressure so that the brakes applied.

About 3 km before the Penistone station, the line ran through a curve of 800 m radius with a gradient of 8 ‰. It led there at the same time over the Bullhouse Bridge , to which the route led from both sides with a railway embankment .

the accident

After exiting the Woodhead Tunnel , a vertex tunnel , the train picked up speed on the descent to Penistone station. About 3 km in front of the station, around 1 p.m., in the area of ​​the embankment leading to the Bullhouse Bridge , the axle of a wheel set of the steam locomotive broke in its right-hand bearing when the train is said to have been traveling at about 80-95 km / h. It was probably due to material fatigue , although the axle had only performed 82,000 km. The engine driver noticed this immediately as the locomotive was running and initiated an emergency stop . The two wheels, now detached from each other, wedged and pushed the rails apart. In this widening of the track, the following cars derailed and the coupling between the second and third car broke. This also interrupted the brake line, which meant that the torn off part of the train could no longer brake. While locomotive, Tender and the immediately following it boxcars for transporting horses in the track remained and about 190 m after the bridge came to a halt, the following derailed train in the curve was carried out and fell from the railway embankment.

consequences

24 people died: 14 women, six men and four children. One of the dead was Massey Bromley, chief locomotive engineer for the Great Eastern Railway from 1878–81. About 50 other people were also injured. A traveler who was only slightly injured and who obviously knew his way around the railway ran back to the next block area and arranged for the route to be closed immediately so that subsequent trains could not enter the scene of the accident.

Experts strongly criticized the fact that a non-automatic braking system was used here. The specialist magazine “ The Engineer ” assumed that the train could easily have been brought to a standstill before it fell from the embankment.

In 2013 a memorial stone was erected at the accident site.

See also

• List of rail accidents in the UK

literature

• George Dow: Great Central. 2: Dominion of Watkin 1864-1899 . Ian Allan Publishing 1962. ISBN 0-7110-1469-8 , pp. 199f.
• NN: The railway accident at Penistone . In: Schweizerische Bauzeitschrift 3/4 (1884) issue 5, p. 28f.
• RA Smith: Fatigue of Railway Axles: A Classic Problem Revisited . In: M. Fuentes, M. Elices, A. Martín-Meizoso, J.-M. Martínez-Esnaola (Ed.): Fracture Mechanics: Applications and Challenges = ESIS Publication 26. Amsterdam 2000, p. 175.
• Clement Edwin Stretton: Safe Railway Working: A Treatise On Railway Accidents, Their Cause and Prevention, with a Description of Modern Appliances and Systems, to Which Are Added Numerous Illustrations of Locomotive Engines . London 1887, ND 2013. ISBN 5878159775

Web links

• Railways Archives - Accidents Archives .
• NN: A railway accident of ghastly severity and fatality took place . In: The Spectator v. July 19, 1884, p. 3.
• NN: Crash victims remembered at Bullhouse Bridge . In: look local (undated).
• The scene of the accident is shown in: The Graphic v. July 26, 1884.

Remarks

1. ^ So Dow and NN: Crash victims ; NN: A railway accident reports 23 deaths three days after the accident, also NN: Der Eisenbahn-Unfall , p. 28; only according to Railways Archives - Accidents Archives 19 people died.
2. ^ Since 1897: Great Central Railway
3. ↑ A railway line from Manchester to Sheffield , closed today in the relevant section and part of the Trans Pennine Trail (NN: Crash victims ).
4. ↑ On average, this only happened after 340,000 km of mileage (Smith: Fatigue ).

Individual evidence

1. ^ NN: A railway accident ; NN: The Railway Accident , p. 28.
2. ↑ Dow.
3. ^ NN: The Railway Accident , p. 28.
4. ^ NN: The Railway Accident , p. 28.
5. ^ NN: Crash victims .
6. ^ Smith: Fatigue .
7. ^ NN: The Railway Accident , p. 28.
8. ^ Smith: Fatigue .
9. ^ Smith: Fatigue .
10. ^ NN: The Railway Accident , p. 28.
11. ^ NN: The Railway Accident , p. 28.
12. ^ NN: Crash victims .
13. ^ NN: The Railway Accident , p. 28.
14. ^ NN: The Railway Accident , p. 28.
15. ^ NN: A railway accident .
16. ↑ Cited in: NN: Der Eisenbahn-Unfall , p. 28.
17. ^ NN: Crash victims .

Coordinates: 53 ° 31'13.1 "  N , 1 ° 40'30.7"  W.