The Nuneaton rail crash occurred on 6 June 1975, on the West Coast Main Line just south of Nuneaton railway station in Warwickshire, England, United Kingdom.

The crash happened when the 23:30 sleeper from London Euston to Glasgow derailed after entering a temporary speed restriction at 4 times the speed limit. Six people (four passengers and two staff) died and 38 were injured. In the subsequent inquiry, the crash was deemed to have been caused by driver error, partially due to the failure of gas lit lamps that illuminated the lineside signage warning of the speed restriction, which resulted to the addition of AWS magnets at every temporary speed restriction site on the British railway network ever since.

Background

The station

Nuneaton railway station is situated on the Trent Valley section of the West Coast Main Line running from to destinations such as , and ; in addition to this it is served by other lines going towards , and , operated by British Rail.

thumb|200px|left|Illuminated warning board for a 20 mph speed restriction, as it would have looked like at the time of the accident

In January 1975, a track remodelling scheme commenced at Nuneaton, which would last during most of the year; by 24 May 1975, the ninth stage of the remodelling scheme went into effect, affecting the fast lines at the Eastern end of the station. The work carried out at the time involved removing the old set of points and crossovers and replacing them with a plain track with authorised speeds of , down from the standard line speed of ; the intention was that later on, a new set of points and crossovers would be installed there, on a new alignment. The temporary stretch of track included some sharp curves. According to the permanent way engineer who supervised the track alterations at Nuneaton, some trains would overspeed and travel through the temporary track section at , and believed that the track was built to handle speeds as high as , with trains only being at real risk at ; additionally, it would take roughly four months until the speed restrictions would be fully lifted. These were gas lit lamps powered with the help of two canisters, which would have provided a week and ten days' worth of lighting, day and night. However, as the canisters were set up incorrectly, the automatic changeover valve that would have changed the supply from one canister to another (after the first one would have emptied) had not been put in use, meaning that at some point, the lights would go out. There were also no other types of warnings installed in regards to the speed restriction, meaning that if the lights would go out, train crews would have no way of telling if the speed restriction had been lifted or if it was still in place.

Ten days before the crash, a daytime InterCity train running from London Euston to Glasgow Central had entered the speed restricted area at instead of because its driver had misread the Weekly Engineering Notice and assumed that the speed restrictions applied to the Down Slow line and not to the Down Fast line he was on, as a result of this, a passenger was scalded by drinks but the train did not derail. In this case the speed restriction boards were illuminated and the driver applied heavy braking in order to avoid a derailment.

The crash led to 6 deaths in total: the first four happened during the derailment, when two passengers and two sleeping car attendants died as the carriages fell and were crushed during the derailment; another two passengers died at the hospital. Another 38 passengers were transported to the Manor Hospital in Nuneaton, where another 10 had to stay for much longer due to serious injuries. Among the passengers was Minister for Agriculture Fred Peart, who would survive the crash with minor injuries, stumbling from the wreckeage in bare feet and walking together with the wounded towards the hospital The inquiry noted that casualties would have been much higher if not for the lightly loaded nature of the train (there were fewer than 100 passengers on board); the fatalities and most injuries on board the train were in the carriages that had been the most badly damaged by falling over and being crushed. Aside from this, the only other reminder of the crash were the shortened Down Fast line platforms, which were never fully repaired after being damaged in the crash.

Most of the carriages that were damaged in the crash had to be cut up on site. Only one of the Class 86 locomotives involved in the crash is still in service, 86242 had been in use on the British railway network until October 2004, with its last allocation on the Great Eastern Main Line between and . In 2013 it was sold to Floyd ZRt. of Hungary and was renumbered to 0450 008-2 for use on freight trains. The other locomotive, 86006 was renumbered to 86406 to be used on InterCity trains before being last operated by Freightliner Ltd, retired in November 2003 and scrapped in June 2007 in Rotherham, South Yorkshire.

See also

Hoofddorp train accident, 1992, the Netherlands: two different trains oversped over temporary tracks with speed restrictions due to the drivers failing to notice the speed restriction in time. In the case of the second accident, 5 people were killed.

References

  • Nuneaton Rail Crash - nuneatonhistory.com - Archive photographs.
  • A short film recording the aftermath of the tragic train crash that occurred at 1.55am on 6 June 1975.