Armagh rail disaster

The Armagh rail disaster happened on 12 June 1889 near Armagh, Ireland. A crowded Sunday school excursion train had to negotiate a steep incline, but the steam locomotive was unable to complete the climb and the train stalled. The train crew decided to divide the train and take forward the front portion, leaving the rear portion on the running line. The rear portion had inadequate brake power and ran back down the gradient, colliding 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 170 injured.

Circumstances of the accident

Armagh Sunday school had organized a day trip to the seaside resort of Warrenpoint, a distance of about 24 miles. A special train was arranged for the journey, carrying almost eight hundred passengers.

The railway route is steeply graded and curved, and the first two and a half miles from Armagh station involved a steep continuous climb, up a gradient of 1 in 82 and then 1 in 75 (1.33%). The train load was greater than the authorised capacity of the small 2-4-0 locomotive, and before starting the driver asked for an assisting engine, but after a conversation with the station master at Armagh he agreed to take the train without assistance. Initially, the train made progress up the steep gradient at about 10 mph but stalled about 200 yards before the summit.

The train crew decided to divide the train and proceed with the front portion to Hamilton's Bawn station, about two miles away, and leave that portion there, and return for the second portion. Due to limited siding capacity at Hamilton's Bawn, they could only take the front five vehicles on there, so that ten vehicles were left standing on the running line; this rear portion only had one brake van in it, and no automatic brake system. To prevent the rear portion from running down the gradient, the crew put stones behind the wheels of two of the vehicles at the rear of the train, and one small stone was placed behind a wheel of the sixth vehicle, that is, the front vehicle of the rear portion being detached. They successfully released the screw coupling between the two portions, which was only possible if the rear portion was effectively prevented from rolling back.

However when the driver attempted to start the front portion away after uncoupling, he allowed it to roll back slightly, jolting the rear portion backwards; this caused the front vehicle of the rear portion to run back over the stone, crushing it. The rear portion had been standing with its couplings tight, but now only the rear two were in any way restrained, so that the leading eight vehicles of the rear portion fell back on to them as the space between the buffers closed up. The momentum of the eight vehicles closing on the rear two was sufficient to push them over the stones, crushing them in turn, so that now only the handbrake on the rear vehicle was effective. It was overcome by the weight of ten vehicles, and they began to gather speed down the steep gradient back towards Armagh station. The train crew reversed the front portion and tried to catch the rear portion and recouple it, but this proved to be impossible.

By now a following ordinary passenger train had left Armagh; the time interval system of operation was in use, so that there was no means at Armagh of ascertaining whether the preceding train had got clear. When the driver of the ordinary train saw the approaching runaway vehicles, he braked his train, and had reduced speed to 5 mph at the moment of collision; the runaway coaches were travelling at about 40 mph at this moment.

Many of the passengers in the excursion train were unable to escape as the doors were locked; witnesses stated that this was done to prevent ticketless travellers joining the train after the ticket inspection. [Report of the Board of Trade (Railway Department) into the circumstances of the collision near Armagh on 12th June 1889, Maj-Gen C S Hutchinson]

Causes

The primary cause of the accident was the inadequacy of the sole hand brake in the rear vehicle to hold the ten vehicles of the detached rear portion of the train stationary on the steep gradient. There was only one brake carriage with a hand brake in this portion, and no continuous automatic brake. The placing of stones behind the wheels of some of the vehicles may be taken as an acknowledgement of this inadequacy. The official enquiry was unable to come to a definite decision as to whether the brake was defective or if it had been meddled with by passengers who were improperly travelling in the brake compartment; it may be that in desperation they accidentally turned the hand wheel the wrong way, releasing it instead of applying it more firmly.

Finally (among the primary causes of the disaster) there was the decision to allow the small engine to attempt the climb without an assisting engine. This was contrary to specific instructions from the locomotive foreman at Dundalk; the inexperienced junior driver at first asked for an assisting engine, but when he did so the Station Master at Armagh told him, "Any driver who comes here does not grumble about taking an excursion train with him", and the driver then agreed to attempt the climb unassisted.

Lessons learned

The disaster marshalled public opinion behind a tightening of the legislative controls on railway practices. For several years the Railway Inspectorate of the Board of Trade had been advocating three vital safety measures (among others) to often reluctant railway managements:

* continuous automatic brakes, which would be applied even if a train was divided;
* interlocking of points and signals, so that conflicting signal indications are prevented; and
* a space-interval or absolute block system of signalling, where one train is not allowed to enter a physical section until the preceding one had left it.

These three measures were referred to as "lock, block and brake".

Public opinion led Parliament to enact the Regulation of Railways Act 1889, which authorised the Board of Trade to require the use of continuous automatic brakes on 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 [Nock, O S, Historic Railway Disasters, Ian Allan Publishing Ltd, 1980] [Rolt L T C, Red for Danger, Bodley Head/David and Charles/Pan Books, 1956] .

Similar accidents

* Murulla railway accident
* Igandu train disaster, Tanzania - 24 June 2002
* Kisumu - 15 August, 2000 - 13 die near Kisumu, after a passenger train rolls back because of brake failure.

See also

* History of rail transport in Ireland
* List of pre-1950 rail accidents
* Railway brake

References

External links

* [http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/BoT_Armagh1889.pdf Railways Archive Website] - Major General Hutchinson's report into the circumstances of the disaster, with original witness statements.