Round Oak Railway Accident

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In the Round Oak railway accident on August 23, 1858, an escaped train part, which was detached from a train formation and then rolled down a slope , collided with a second train between the stations of Round Oak and Brettel Lane , today: Metropolitan Borough of Dudley who was just going up this slope. 14 people died. This was the most momentous railway accident in Great Britain at the time.

Contemporary print: The Accident on the Oxford and Worcester Railway, near Round Oak Station

Starting position

Infrastructure

The accident occurred on a route from Worcester to Wolverhampton on the Oxford, Worcester & Wolverhampton Railway . This ran between the Brettel Lane and Round Oak stations on a relatively steep slope. It was still operated without a line block , the trains ran at intervals. This meant that after a train left a station on the route, the next one was allowed to follow it after a set time. If a train got stuck, someone had to be sent towards the next train to signal that the line was still occupied. There was a telegraph connection along the route .

Outward journey

On the morning of August 23, 1858, a very long excursion train had left Wolverhampton for Worcester. For this purpose, 1,506 special, particularly inexpensive tickets were sold. It consisted of 42 two-axle passenger cars and four baggage cars , which were the only ones on the train with brakes . As was customary at the time, the wagons were two-axle vehicles with a wooden structure, which were connected with a central screw coupling and a safety chain on each side of it.

The last car of the train was a brake car, the brakeman of which was the chief brakeman of the train and was called Frederick Cook . There were also passengers in the brake compartment of the car , which was forbidden, but the train was overcrowded. The atmosphere between the brakeman and the traveler was relaxed and lively, rum was drunk and smoked , whereupon Frederick Cook also put travelers on the brakes several times. They had no practice in it and braked too sharply. Since this happened in the last car of the train, the couplings of the entire train were put under tension and so strongly that three times, in front of the train stations Brettell Lane , Hagley and Droitwich , couplings in the train broke, whereby two screw couplings and four safety chains broke . Another screw coupling was damaged. Some of the damage was only temporarily repaired because no spare parts were available.

Return trip

On the return journey in the evening, the train was split into two parts in order to cope with the inclines, each of which was run as a separate train and operated one after the other. After the locomotive, the first train carried a first brake car, then 28 passenger cars and finally the brake car in which Frederick Cook was on duty. In Stourbridge he also received a leader locomotive . The second train received only one locomotive, the remaining 14 passenger cars and the other two brake cars. This second move followed the first immediately before the accident, 11 or 12 minutes apart.

the accident

Frederick Cook had illegally allowed travelers to stay in the brake compartment of his brake van on the return journey. Both travelers and Frederick Cook drank rum. By the time the train entered the Round Oak station around 8:10 pm, it was already dark. When the train stopped there, the coupling between the 11th and 12th car broke, presumably when the train set relaxed again after the cars that had run into each other when the train stopped moved backwards a little. Immediately the rear 17 cars began to roll down the ramp towards Brettel Lane , now with the Frederick Cook's brake car in front. There were about 450 travelers in them.

The incident was immediately noticed by the station staff in Round Oak . The attempt to send a telegram to Brettel Lane station and warn it failed because no one was near the telegraph. It wouldn't have been of any use either, because the second train was already on the line.

Due to the darkness, the train driver of the following train only saw the approaching ghost train when it had already approached within 300 meters. He braked immediately. The second train had almost come to a standstill when the ghost train hit the locomotive of the following second train at around 20 km / h - probably unbraked. While its locomotive did not even derail , only lost the buffers and chimney and was then even able to continue the journey, the wooden structure of the brake car of Frederick Cook and the two following passenger cars was completely smashed. Frederick Cook survived, claiming he jumped off before the collision. There were witnesses who claimed he was still on the wagon when the downhill ride began.

consequences

14 people died in the accident - all of them traveled in wagons of the ghost train. At least 50 people were also injured - only very few of them on the second train. 170 claimed compensation for pain and suffering from the railway company due to injuries or property damage .

The chief brakeman Frederick Cook was found guilty of manslaughter by a jury in front of the coroner . He claimed to have stayed on the car and braked immediately without bringing the train to a standstill and then jumping off shortly before the collision. The witness statements on this were inconclusive. Experiments with an identically composed “ghost train”, which traveled the ramp several times and was braked at different points at different speeds, showed, however, that it could be stopped easily with the brake truck. The brake linkage recovered from the rubble was in the "released" position and was so bent as a result of the accident that it could not have been adjusted afterwards. This also indicated that the brake had not been applied at all. From this, the jury concluded that Frederick Cook had left the vehicle without first using the brake to secure the stopping train.

In the accident report, the railway company was criticized for failing to ensure that only reliable employees were used as brakes when selecting personnel and that - based on the number of passengers - too few staff accompanied the train at all. The report also recommended using the (existing) telegraphs for regular train reports between the two stations, so that a following train is only allowed onto the route and onto the incline when a route vacancy has been reported by the neighboring station.

See also

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ The ticket cost 1 / 11 d .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ HW Tyler: Oxford , p. 110.
  2. ^ HW Tyler: Oxford , p. 111.
  3. ^ HW Tyler: Oxford , p. 110.
  4. ^ NN: The Railway Catastrophe .
  5. ^ HW Tyler: Oxford , p. 113.
  6. ^ HW Tyler: Oxford , p. 110.
  7. ^ NN: The Railway Catastrophe .
  8. ^ NN: The Railway Catastrophe .
  9. ^ HW Tyler: Oxford , p. 111.
  10. ^ HW Tyler: Oxford , p. 111.
  11. ^ HW Tyler: Oxford , p. 112.
  12. ^ NN: The Railway Catastrophe .
  13. ^ HW Tyler: Oxford , p. 111.
  14. ^ NN: The Late Railway Accident .
  15. ^ HW Tyler: Oxford , p. 111.
  16. ^ HW Tyler: Oxford , p. 112.
  17. ^ HW Tyler: Oxford , p. 114.


Coordinates: 52 ° 28 '58.8 "  N , 2 ° 7' 39.4"  W.