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Rail Accidents needed for Discovery Documentary

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Rugd1022

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How about:
Hither Green 1967 (broken rail following track relaying)
Armagh 1889 (overloaded train, no automatic brake)

There haven't been many accidents ever on the main line caused by broken sleepers, as the number of consecutive failures required precludes the gauge getting bad enough.

Overloaded freight trains running out of control is generally the stuff of Holywood, though this one technically counts (though it wasn't overloaded).

Just an incidental detail regarding the Hither Green derailment of '67.... the late Robin Gibb was a passenger on this train and had only been in the country a few weeks at the time.

One particular freight derailment which comes to mind involved a Saltley driver known as 'Stacker Steadman'... I don't have a date or any real detail on this one but he went down the Lickey a tad too quick, was put in the Goods Loop at Bromsgrove and still couldn't stop, ending up going through the traps at the south end... resulting in several of his wagons being stacked up on top of each other. One of our (ex-SY) drivers knows more about it so I'll ask next time I see him.
 
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TomDocumentary

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Tom, I am aware of one bridge failure in the Republic of Ireland in 2003 at Cahir, Co Tipperary. This resulted in 12 of 22 cement wagons derailing and ending up in the River Suir below. While I don't remember if the sleepers were directly attributable, I think there was mention of the timber in the secondary deck playing a part. It's a long time since I read a summary report but the the full report is available here - http://www.rsc.ie/publications/accident-report-cahir-viaduct-07102003/ which might help you more

Hi PFX, thanks for sending me this link. I will certainly have a good read through this and see if it is suitable.
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Try the Weaver Junction collision in 1976 – most of the Operations Dept Managers at Garston got shafted over that as well as the shunting staff at Runcorn and (I think) the Guard. The train was running as a Class ‘6’ but because of the completely inadequate brake force available, it should have been more like a class ‘8’ with a suitable reduction in speed. The result was that the train (from Runcorn to Willesden) couldn’t stop at a red and hit a Freightliner side on. I did have the Report but am not sure where it is - I still have a few hundred from the past so I'll have a look if there is anything of interest to you in them.

G

Hi Greeny, thank you for the heads up on this one. I've been looking into this incident this afternoon and it seems like it might well fit. There are also a number of other options I am looking into for this type of disaster but I will let you know if we do end up going for this one!
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Hi everyone,

I am researching for a television production for the Discovery Channel about the exciting engineering behind train systems around the world. I am currently looking for incidents / accidents that have occurred because of:

A) Broken/rotten sleepers
B) Overloaded trains

Does anyone know of any examples of where accidents have occurred (either on freight or passenger trains) for either of the above reasons? I am looking for examples where archive footage of the incident or aftermath of the incident may exist. Also the more recent the incident the better.

Thank you very much for your help!

Hi everyone,
Just wanted to say a massive thank you for all the leads you have given me. I can assure you that I am following all of these up at the moment to work out which ones might be suitable. If anyone does have any other examples that they think might be suitable then please feel free to keep posting them up.
 

SWTCommuter

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The fungus Neolentinus lepideus is known as the 'train wrecker' because of its unusual ability to grow on and decompose creosoted timber such as railway sleepers. I don't know it has actually caused any accidents though.
 

sbt

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Everybody has been focusing on the UK

Surely this must be the canonical European 'Overloaded Train' accident:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne_derailment

One 4-6-0, 19 wooden coaches and vans, of which 3 had automatic brakes and a 1 in 33 decent. The train was loaded to 4 times the regulation weight.

As with Quintinshill the number of dead will never be known exactly but was in the region of 700 out of around 1000 troops on their way home for Christmas.

It even has a UK angle, if one is needed, in that prompt and proper action by an intermediate Stationmaster led to a train of Scottish troops heading uphill being stopped before it could be in collision with the accident train, which had overrun signals. The troops from that train formed a large part of the rescue party.

There is also the 1888 Borki Accident, which killed 21.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borki_train_disaster

This involved Tzar Alexander III aboard his personal train, which was overweight for the speeds its was timetabled at. There were also technical issues with the train design.

There were three separate investigators, all of whom came to different conclusions - one of them blaming the poor condition of the sleepers.
 

Yew

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Or You may want to think about the Lime Street Crash in the early 90's - photo attached.

Thats not making me feel good about my regular pacer commute anymore...
 

pendolino

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Derailment of an overloaded speeding engineers train at Bexley in 1996 , also root cause was rotten track and waybeams. Could have been very serious as on a viaduct in a built up area. HSE fined Railtrack

It was very serious for all the dodgy garages in the arches under the viaduct when the police turned up on site after the train crash.
 
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