Armagh rail disaster
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The Armagh rail disaster happened on 12 June 1889 near Armagh, Co. Armagh, in what is now Northern Ireland. A train stalled on an incline and was divided; the rear section ran backwards down the gradient and collided with a following train. At the time it was the worst rail disaster in Europe, and it remains the fourth-worst in the United Kingdom. Eighty-eight people were killed, most of them children, and one hundred and seventy injured.
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[edit] Circumstances of the accident
Armagh Sunday school had organized a day trip to the seaside resort of Warrenpoint. A special train was arranged for this occasion, carrying almost six hundred passengers. To sell more tickets, two extra carriages had been added at the last minute. Although it has been often assumed that the train was too heavy for the locomotive, later tests after the accident using an equally weighted train showed that the locomotive could deal with the increased weight. However the line on which the train was to travel had gradients of 1 in 70 (1.4%) at a later stage and it is unknown whether the locomotive would have been able to negotiate these. As the train left Armagh, at 10.20 a.m. it was faced with a long uphill gradient of 1 in 75 (1.3%). According to the evidence given by the fireman and James Elliott, clerk in the general manager's office, the train achieved good speed until it had almost reached the top, but the engine stalled 200 yards from the summit. However, the driver, McGrath, said that the train was losing speed the entire way.
The train's braking system was continuous non-automatic vacuum, meaning that all the carriages had brakes, but it was not automatic or fail-safe. In the 'non-automatic' brake system a vacuum had to be created in the system to apply the brake and allowing air to enter the system released the brake. In contrast, in the 'automatic' system the creation of a vacuum in the system releases the brake. When air is allowed to enter the system, for example when brake pipes are disconnected, the brakes are applied. The flaw in the non automatic system is that the brakes do not function once a train is separated from its locomotive, the source of the vacuum.
To get the train over the summit, the driver decided to split the train in two. As the rear section of the train would be left without brakes, the train crew were ordered by Elliott to place stones behind the wheels of this section, as well as applying a handbrake in the guard's van. Elliott did not, however, wait to see if this had been carried out. Unfortunately, the engine had stalled with its pistons in the "dead centre" position, meaning that when it was restarted to take the front section of the train over the summit, it moved back slightly, crushing the stones. The handbrake alone was not sufficient to hold the rear section, which rolled away down the hill. The occupants were unable to escape as the doors were locked as was standard practice on Sunday school excursions to prevent children exiting the train while it was in motion. This practice was also employed to stop entry by fare dodgers.
Meanwhile, the 10.35 a.m. train had left Armagh. Its crew saw ten carriages careering backwards towards them with people jumping off the running boards and children being thrown from the windows of the locked carriages. The 10.35 braked and had slowed to 5 mph before being hit by the runaway carriages travelling at 40 mph. The final three carriages and occupants were totally destroyed.
[edit] Causes
The accident occurred chiefly because of the inadequacy of the braking system, although the actions of Foster the Station Master at Armagh in adding an extra two coaches, as well as McGrath's decision to take the train anyway without banking assistance, must also come into question. In addition William Fenton, acting locomotive superintendent at Dundalk, can share the blame because he allocated a locomotive with little knowledge of the line it was to work on and allocated a driver who also had no knowledge of the line from Armagh. The power of the locomotive was not necessarily a factor because of the evidence of later tests, although a more powerful locomotive would have made the climb much more comfortably. It has been suggested that the locomotive stalled in part due to accidental application of the brakes by passengers in the guard's vans. The time interval signalling system also played a part in allowing the 10:35 train to depart, although with the speed at which the runaway coaches were travelling, they would still have hit the 10:35 even if it were in the station. Also the coaches would probably have still derailed on the sharp curves beyond Armagh station. James Elliott's omission to check if the stones had been placed properly and the decision to extend the couplings to their full extent must also be mentioned, as this allowed the coaches to relax, crushing the stones and exceeding the brake on the Guard's van.
[edit] Lessons learned
The disaster shocked rail authorities into making significant safety improvements. For years the Railway Inspectorate of the Board of Trade had been advocating three vital safety measures to often reluctant railway managements:
- continuous automatic brakes, which would stay on even if a train was broken in two;
- the space-interval or absolute block system of signalling, where one train was not allowed into a physical section until the preceding one had left it;
- interlocking, where points and signals are mechanically linked so that they cannot be conflicting.
The accident was avoidable had the recommendations of the Railway Inspectorate been followed. If the train had been equipped with continuous brakes, or if the space-interval system had been in operation, the collision would not have occurred. Public outrage at the incident led the UK Parliament to pass the Regulation of Railways Act 1889, which made continuous automatic brakes mandatory on United Kingdom passenger railways, along with the block system of signalling and the interlocking of all points and signals. This is often taken as the beginning of the "modern era" in UK rail safety (Rolt 1956, Nock 1980).
[edit] Similar accidents
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Nock, O.S. (1980). Historic Railway Disasters, 2nd ed., Ian Allan.
- Rolt, L.T.C. (1956 (and later editions)). Red for Danger. Bodley Head / David and Charles / Pan Books.
