Help finding details of an unusual collision

[JLB]

Can anyone help please? I'm trying to find more details of a collision that occurred due to some rather unusual circumstances. The date and location I cannot remember, and I hope someone will be able to fill in the blanks.

To start with I'm sure it happened between the years 1900 and 1950, in the UK. The driver ("motorman" in the report) of an EMU leaned out of the sliding side window of his cab to spy on a "courting couple". He had disabled the dead-man's handle by trying two handkerchiefs (one white, the other red) around it to hold it down. All had proceeded well until the train passed a post or gantry alongside the track, at which point the driver's head made contact, killing him and pulling him completely out of the train. The train ran unattended for a few minutes before colliding with something (I forget what this was).

If it helps, it was in an issue of "World of Trains", a partwork magazine from the 90s, which is sadly no longer in my collection.

Thanks for reading, any help will be greatly appreciated!

 

[edwin_m]

Have you tried railwaysarchive.co.uk?

 

[MoleStation]

Hello! Long time lurker new poster etc.
The accident happened at Heaton Station on the Tyneside Electrics. After the Motorman was killed and knocked out of the cab, the train carried on, through Manors Station and eventually derailed near the Keep. I think it might have collided with a freight train.
I had the accident report as a PDF on my old phone, which is now completely dead, and can I heck find the PDF with a Google search, but it is there somewhere.
Hope this helps!

 

[ainsworth74]

Railways Archive have the report which can be found here (direct link to report pdf here) with a brief extract below:

In this case the 9.47 p.m. electric train running on the circular journey from Newcastle and back again, via Monkseaton and Heaton, came into sidelong collision with a goods train which was crossing in front of it immediately west of Manors Station.

The body of the motorman was subsequently found under a bridge a short distance west of Heaton Station, and the collision therefore occurred when the electric train was running without a driver.

There were in the electric train between 150 and 175 passengers, of whom there were apparently only three in the leading coach. It is fortunate that there were only sixteen cases of injury among the passengers and that none of them was of a particularly serious character. It is probable that the train was running at least 35 miles an hour at the time of the collision.

However, for those hoping for a more salacious tale, the inspector in this case Major Hall refused to be drawn on the reasons for the driver (a Mr Skinner) leaning out of the window:

There is little object in speculating upon Skinner's reasons for leaning out of the train as he did. They may have bean legitimate or they may have been the reverse.

 

[racyrich]

It's also one of the disasters mention in 'British Railway Disasters', well worth getting. The voyeurism in question was described as 'dogging' - must be one of the earliest usages of the word like that.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/British-Railway-Disasters-Various/dp/0711024707/

 

[43096]

The accident report is here: http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/MoT_ManorsJunction1926.pdf

 

[XDM]

There was an exactly similar incident on a late night weekday train from Liverpool Street to Stratford.
It was folklore among motormen at Liverpool Street.

It happened in the mid 1960s. The driver disabled the dead mans handle so he could spy on a canoodling couple in the compartment behind his cab.
His head hit a signal gantry & the train was stopped by the guard after it failed to slow for Stratford.

A driver relative told me the story when I joined the railway warning me not to do the same.
Apparently it was the front page story in the London Evening Standard.

I have occasionally wondered if it was true.
Presumably accident reports or the Standard archive would reveal the truth. Another thing to investigate in the future.

I recall being told it was one if the rare late night trains to Southend from Liverpool Street on what became years later the c2c line.