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Central line Incident from early 1980s

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overthewater

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Can anyone remember the following:

The Central Line was closed for 7 hours because a train broke down at bank station because of out of place live rail, which also affect six other trains. This resulted in over 3000 passengers being trapped.

The Tuesday before two trains collide at Marble Arch.

Rouge date would be very help.
 
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Peter Mugridge

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There was a collision at Holborn on 9th July 1980; is that the one you are thinking of? That's the only one I can find online in the timespan.

If so... that was a Wednesday, so the Tuesday would have been the 8th July.
 

Dstock7080

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Can anyone remember the following:

The Central Line was closed for 7 hours because a train broke down at bank station because of out of place live rail, which also affect six other trains. This resulted in over 3000 passengers being trapped.

The Tuesday before two trains collide at Marble Arch.

Rough date would be very help.
from LURS archives: http://www.lurs.org.uk/UN253 JAN 1983.pdf
On Tuesday evening 16 November 1982, train 62, the 20.09 from Hainault to Ealing. Broadway, became stalled between St. Pauls and Chancery Lane because of an air defect on the train. Having isolated the defect , passengers were detrained on arrival at Chancery Lane and then the train proceeded empty. As the delay was building up , somewhat in the region of 30 minutes, train 25, the 20.43 from West Ruislip to Epping was reversed east to west at Marble Arch via the siding, to fill the gap in the westbound service. It was while train 25 was standing in the westbound platform at Marble Arch that train 62 still running empty, overran the Marble Arch home signals and collided with train 25. The trains were formed as follows: train 25 - 1660-2660-9661-1661+1500-2528-9501-1501; train 62 - 1458-2458-9459-1459+1544-2544-9545-1545. Extensive damage was caused to the two DMs , with the cabs of both having to be cut off before moved to Ruislip depot. Also, trailer 2458 was also badly damaged in. that the panelling has come away from the roof line at one end. Train services were immediately suspended between Liverpool Street and White City and the detrainment of the eight stalled trains behind set 62 was completed within an hour . Four of these were later worked wrong line back to Holborn and then back to Hainault right line via British Museum siding - last used at the time of the Holborn collision in I980. Train 25 was moved to Ruislip depot at 02.30 on Wednesday morning , but train 62 could not be moved until 11.25 Wednesday, into Marble Arch siding - it went to Ruislip depot after traffic Wednesday night/Thursday morning. For the morning peak service' on Wednesday 17.11.82 special services were worked as follows:
8 trains Hainault & Liverpool Street
10 trains Epping & Holborn (Leytonstone only until 07.30)
6 trains'West Ruislip & White City
3 trains Ealing Broadway & White City
In addition, four trains made eastbound trips through the central area, as follows: 08.00 White City" to Hainault .08.00 West Ruislip to Hainault 08.15 West Ruislip to Hainault 08.30 West Ruislip to Hainault.

The Central Line was yet again in the news on Monday 22.11.82 when a west - bound train stalled at Bank at 09.03 having sustained a broken shoebeam. It was not until 10.53 that the train departed empty after attendance by the breakdown gang. Passengers from two out of the Ij trapped behind the defective train were detrained which was completed at 10.46. The 11 others were held at or between stations between Mile End and Liverpool Street , and passengers from these were detrained onto platforms where possible . However, one of these trains arrived at Liverpool Street at 12.12 with passengers still on board. Another train displaced 24 metres of positive current rail at 11.15 and central area services were suspended until 15.30. A third train to sustain a broken shoebeam stalled at West Acton at 13.45. This was moved to White City depot after the offending shoebeam had been safely strapped up. Mr.Cope , LTs Operations Director (Rail) was interviewed on television. He said that the Bank incident had been made to sound worse than it was . He said that everything had been carried out in absolute safety, and bearing in mind that over 4,000 people were stranded it was an achievement to have had them all out in about two hours , "A railway which never went wrong" , Mr.Cope said, "would never turn a wheel!"
 

westv

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Can anyone remember the following:

The Central Line was closed for 7 hours because a train broke down at bank station because of out of place live rail, which also affect six other trains. This resulted in over 3000 passengers being trapped.

The Tuesday before two trains collide at Marble Arch.

Rouge date would be very help.
Yes, I remember it vaguely. A lady I used to work with back then was one of the trapped passengers. I seem to remember her saying she was down there for 8 hours and, as a result, never used the tube again.
 

overthewater

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Cheers for the information. It's seems to have gone unnoticed on the net.
 

Peter Mugridge

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Cheers for the information. It's seems to have gone unnoticed on the net.

That is par for the course for anything from pre-Internet days unfortunately; unless something was particularly high profile the chances are it won't be online unless someone has copied a lot of archive material over.
 

Busaholic

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That is par for the course for anything from pre-Internet days unfortunately; unless something was particularly high profile the chances are it won't be online unless someone has copied a lot of archive material over.
I've alluded before on this forum to an incident that happened back in the 1970s that I read about at the time, but have never found mentioned on the internet. By coincidence, this occurred on the Central Line too, and I can narrow it down to when I was working for Camden Council, which was 1973-6. My interest was piqued through working for London Transport prior to Camden, including a period at Central Line control at Oxford Circus. What I can remember of it was that a trainful of passengers (and it was dozens, at least) was trapped overnight in the tunnel somewhere east of Liverpool Street and west of Mile End. I believe the duration was at least seven hours, and there was some evidence that London Underground, as an organisation, were unaware of the extent of it and thus no serious efforts were made for some while to solve the situation. I'd love to re-read the reports of the time, should anyone ever be able to access them.
 

vinnym70

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It's actually quite remarkable how many signficant incidents pre-internet disappear from obvious memory.

Things I can remember that were quite significant news at the time but seem forgotten (unless you can remember dates and locations or were local to the events):

IRA bombing of Piccadilly tube train at Wood Green March 1976 - bomb exploded before picking up Arsenal fans post-match and was empty at the time
February 1991, bombing of Paddington and Victoria stations on same day. Paddington roof damaged; 1 dead many injured at Victoria

I was working for a US bank in June 1992 when a small IRA bomb exploded outside of the office. It blew the windows of the building and upset the staff restaurant in the basement somewhat but there was no warning unlike a lot of other IRA attacks in the City around that time. There's minimal mention of this event although for obvious reasons it's fairly well etched on my mind - mainly because the device was believed to have been in a briefcase but managed to damage the windows up to the fourth floor when it was detonated at street level.

For some, I suspect it's a surprise just how prolific the IRA were at carrying out attacks on the mainland.
 
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jellybaby

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It's actually quite remarkable how many signficant incidents pre-internet disappear from obvious memory.
There is a fairly comprehensive London list at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_London and some newspapers have published their archive.

One that was local to me is reported at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...nge-of-strategy-by-ira-over-bomb-1508691.html . I found out about it about half an hour after the explosion when picking up the papers for my round. We were less than 500m away and apart from hearing about it from the milkman we were undisrupted.
 

Central

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Can remember an incident in the late 70s when a defective current rail splay at Liverpool St damaged positive shoebeams on practically the whole Central Line stock.I was Depot Chargehand at Hainault that day,the depot was full up by 11am.The service didn't start up again till around 2pm but what with reforming & stopped units it was a severly reduced service.The workshop staff loved it,the incident was on Friday so they got a weekend in on overtime to replace shoebeams.
 

greyman42

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Does anyone remember an incident at Chancery Lane when a train came into contact with the tunnel wall ? My memory is very vague on this.
 

Peter Mugridge

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Does anyone remember an incident at Chancery Lane when a train came into contact with the tunnel wall ? My memory is very vague on this.

Wasn't that one of the "drill bits penetrating a tunnel" incident, of which there were a few some years ago? Pretty sure one was on the Central and another, a much more serious one, was on the Bakerloo. I think there was a third one in north London somewhere at around the same time span.
 

Dstock7080

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Does anyone remember an incident at Chancery Lane when a train came into contact with the tunnel wall ? My memory is very vague on this.
25 January 2003

Wasn't that one of the "drill bits penetrating a tunnel" incident, of which there were a few some years ago? Pretty sure one was on the Central and another, a much more serious one, was on the Bakerloo. I think there was a third one in north London somewhere at around the same time span.
Newbury Park involving 1962 Stock was a drill-bit incident.
I don’t recall one on the Bakerloo.
Similar one on Northern City Line with cl.313 recently.
Also Temple eastbound, although no trains involved.
 
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Busaholic

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It's actually quite remarkable how many signficant incidents pre-internet disappear from obvious memory.

Things I can remember that were quite significant news at the time but seem forgotten (unless you can remember dates and locations or were local to the events):

IRA bombing of Piccadilly tube train at Wood Green March 1976 - bomb exploded before picking up Arsenal fans post-match and was empty at the time
February 1991, bombing of Paddington and Victoria stations on same day. Paddington roof damaged; 1 dead many injured at Victoria

I was working for a US bank in June 1992 when a small IRA bomb exploded outside of the office. It blew the windows of the building and upset the staff restaurant in the basement somewhat but there was no warning unlike a lot of other IRA attacks in the City around that time. There's minimal mention of this event although for obvious reasons it's fairly well etched on my mind - mainly because the device was believed to have been in a briefcase but managed to damage the windows up to the fourth floor when it was detonated at street level.

For some, I suspect it's a surprise just how prolific the IRA were at carrying out attacks on the mainland.
There's also some misinformation about incidents that occurred, not deliberately so I am sure but details treated as gospel can get repeated often enough they go on what is treated as an 'official record' i.e. Wikipedia! How can I be so sure? Well, I have heard three separate IRA bombs go off, and witnessed close hand the aftermath of two others. In the case of the Euston and King's Cross bombs on the same morning I heard the Euston bomb go off from the Camden Council office I worked in just off the Euston Road: you could normally hear nothing of the outside world, but there was a faint 'crump' and I immediately said to colleagues ''that was a bomb going off'', even though I'd never heard one before (it has to be said an IRA campaign was expected). On the internet the chronology and certain other things are wrong, especially in relation to the KX one. These things are etched on my memory forever.
 

Central

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The Chancery Lane incident wasn't a train hitting the tunnel wall,it was a guard's head hitting the headwall!!!Rumour had it he was distracted by an attractive woman on the platform and forgot the tunnel was coming up.Needless to say it was a fatal mistake.
 

Dstock7080

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The Chancery Lane incident wasn't a train hitting the tunnel wall,it was a guard's head hitting the headwall!!
Saturday 25 January 2003 train 002 formed 91005-92005+92142-93142+93256-92256+92001-91001 the rear four cars derailed at 13.52 approaching the westbound platform at Chancery Lane, a traction motor under car 93256 coming adrift.
Services through Chancery Lane resumed on Thursday 3 April 2003.
 

Central

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That's not the incident,look at the original post,incident in early 80s.92TS didn't come into service till 1993 at the earliest.
 

Dstock7080

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That's not the incident,look at the original post,incident in early 80s.92TS didn't come into service till 1993 at the earliest.
The Chancery Lane post didn’t mention anything about ‘early 80s’:
Does anyone remember an incident at Chancery Lane when a train came into contact with the tunnel wall ? My memory is very vague on this.
 

Electrostar

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There was a collision at Holborn on 9th July 1980; is that the one you are thinking of? That's the only one I can find online in the timespan.

If so... that was a Wednesday, so the Tuesday would have been the 8th July.

The Thames News edition from that day is available on YouTube with in-depth coverage of the crash, references to Moorgate and even an interview with the editor of Railway Gazette.
 

greyman42

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The Thames News edition from that day is available on YouTube with in-depth coverage of the crash, references to Moorgate and even an interview with the editor of Railway Gazette.
The incident referred to in #16 is the one I had in mind.
 

Central

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Remember now,collision on WB at Holborn,the theory was speed control signal cleared a fraction too early before preceding train had cleared the platform.Ironically Charlie Cope,Chief Operating Manager at the time,was travelling on one of the trains.
 

Busaholic

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Remember now,collision on WB at Holborn,the theory was speed control signal cleared a fraction too early before preceding train had cleared the platform.Ironically Charlie Cope,Chief Operating Manager at the time,was travelling on one of the trains.
From what I remember hearing about his reputation I wouldn't have liked being any of the staff involved in the firing line!
 
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