Railway Disasters

The Worst Ever British Railway Disaster: Quintinshill, 1915

In terms of lives lost, this is the worst British railway disaster. It involved five trains. The cause of the accident was poor working practices on the part of the two signalmen involved, which resulted in their imprisonment for culpable homicide after legal proceedings in both Scotland and England. The disaster deserves a more detailed description.

The Quintinshill rail disaster occurred on 22^nd May 1915 in Scotland near Gretna Green at Quintinshill, an intermediate signal box with loops on each side on the Caledonian Railway main line linking Glasgow and Carlisle. Click on the diagram for an animation of the disaster.

It is thought that 226 people lost their lives and 246 were injured. The total of 226 comprises 214 soldiers on a troop train, 9 passengers from two passenger trains and three railway employees. Those killed were mainly Territorial soldiers from the 1/7th (Leith) Battalion, the Royal Scots heading for Gallipoli. The precise number of dead was never established with confidence as the roll list of the regiment was destroyed by the fire. Four bodies, believed to be of children, were never identified or claimed and are buried in the Western Necropolis, Glasgow. They were speculated to be stowaways on the troop train, but the probability is that they were among the 50 troops whose bodies were never recovered at all. The official report into the accident gives the figure as 227 (but did not mention the four children), but the report was compiled very soon after the accident and gave the number of troops killed as 215 which was later revised downwards by the army to 214, the figure which appears on the memorial in the Rosebank Cemetery in Edinburgh. A number of bodies were never recovered, having been wholly consumed by the fire, and the bodies that were recovered were buried together in a mass grave in the Rosebank Cemetery.

The crash occurred when a troop train travelling from Larbert to Liverpool collided with a local passenger train that had been shunted on to the main line, to then be hit by an express train to Glasgow which crashed into the wreckage a minute later. Gas from the lighting system of the old wooden carriages of the troop train ignited, starting a fire which soon engulfed the three passenger trains and also two goods trains standing on nearby passing loops.

The accident occurred because of poor working practices on the part of the two signalmen involved: George Meakin, who had worked the night shift, and James Tinsley, who was to work the early day shift. If they had been working according to regulations, then Tinsley would have taken over from Meakin at 6.00 am. The two men, though, had developed an informal arrangement allowing whoever was working the early shift to arrive later. If the local passenger train from Carlisle to Beattock was due to be shunted at Quintinshill then the signalmen at Gretna would advise whoever was working the early shift of this and the day signalman would hitch a ride on the local train to Quintinshill, thus saving himself the 1.5 mile walk from Gretna. To avoid their malpractice being detected by company management, whoever was working the night shift would record all train movements after 6.00 am on a piece of paper rather than record them in the train register. When the day man arrived, he would copy the entries from the paper into the train register, making it appear that the shift change had occurred at the correct time. Normally the local train would not shunt at Quintinshill but a rule allowed for the train to be shunted at one of the intermediate stations or signalboxes if one or other of the night expresses from London to Glasgow was running late.

On the morning of 22^nd May the night expresses were both running late so the local train had to be shunted at Quintinshill, and therefore Tinsley took advantage of the free ride on it to arrive there at about 6.30 am. As the goods loop was occupied with the 4.50 am goods train from Carlisle, Meakin decided to shunt the local passenger train onto the Up main line. (On the line between Carlisle and Glasgow, ‘Up’ is towards Carlisle and ‘Down’ is towards Glasgow.) Although not a preferred method of operation, this was not a dangerous thing to do if the proper precautions were taken. Out of the previous 21 occasions that the local train had been shunted at Quintinshill, on four occasions it had been shunted onto the Up line. On this occasion neither of the important safety precautions were taken. Firstly, Kirkpatrick signal box (the preceding box in the Up direction) was not sent the “blocking back” signal which would have informed the Kirkpatrick signalman that the line was occupied and warned him not to send any more trains towards Quintinshill. Secondly, the signalman at Quintinshill should have placed a signal lever collar over the relevant signal lever to stop himself from clearing the signal and allowing another train to proceed from Kirkpatrick.

The laxity of the fireman of the local train, George Hutchinson, in carrying out his duties under Rule 55 meant that Tinsley’s and Meakin’s failures went unobserved. Had Hutchinson carried out his duty correctly, he would have reminded the signalman that his train was standing on the Up main line and would have checked that a lever collar was in place before returning to his train. He did neither, and merely signed the train register, using a pen which Tinsley, who was intent on filling in the train register, handed over his shoulder without looking up, and left the signal box at 6.46 am. Also in the signal box, against the rules, were two other railwaymen (brakesmen from the two goods trains) whose presence may have distracted Tinsley and Meakin who were discussing the war with the two brakesmen.

At 6.34 am one of the signalmen (it was never established who) gave the “train out of section” bell to Kirkpatrick for the coal train which now stood in the up goods loop. After giving train out of section, this was the point at which the “blocking back” signal should have been given to Kirkpatrick but neither man did this. At 6.38 am the first of the expresses from Carlisle passed Quintinshill heading north. At 6.42 am Kirkpatrick “offered” the troop train to Tinsley. Tinsley immediately accepted this and four minutes later was offered the second northbound express from Gretna Junction. At 6.47 am Tinsley received the “train entering section” signal from Kirkpatrick for the troop train and offered it forward to Gretna Junction, having forgotten all about the local passenger train which was occupying the Up line. It was immediately accepted by Gretna Junction so Tinsley pulled “off” his Up home signal to allow the troop train forward. Had he placed a lever collar on this signal as he should have done (and as Hutchinson should have checked) then Tinsley would not have been able to pull the signal lever.

The troop train collided head on with the stationary local train on the up line at 6.49 am. Just over a minute later, the second of the express trains ran into the wreckage. The wreckage also included the goods train in the down loop and a train of empty coal trucks in the up loop. At 6.53 Tinsley sent the “Obstruction Danger” bell signal to both Gretna and Kirkpatrick, stopping all traffic and alerting others to the disaster.

A great number of men on the troop train were killed as a result of the two collisions and the disaster was made much worse by a subsequent fire. The great wartime traffic and a shortage of carriages meant that the railway company had to press into service obsolete Great Central Railway stock. These carriages had wooden bodies and frames, so had very little crash resistance compared with steel framed carriages, and were gas-lit using the Pintsch gas system. The gas was stored in reservoirs slung under the underframe and these ruptured in the collision, the escaping gas igniting from the coal burning fires of the engines. The gas reservoirs had just been charged prior to leaving Larbert and this, plus the lack of available water, meant it was not until the morning of the next day that the fire was extinguished despite the best efforts of railway staff and the Carlisle fire brigade.

The troop train had consisted of 21 vehicles and apart from the rear six, which had broken away during the impact and rolled back along the line a short distance, the entire train was consumed in the fire, as were four coaches from the express train and some goods wagons. All four locomotives (the express was double headed) of the troop train, the local train and the express, were also badly damaged by fire and the intensity of the fire was so hot that all the coal in the tenders was consumed.

Considering the double collision and the fire, casualties in the other trains other than the troop train were lighter than might have been expected. On the local train two passengers died, with none seriously injured; on the express seven passengers died, with a further 51 and 3 members of railway staff seriously injured.

The first official investigation into the disaster was conducted by the Railway Inspectorate on behalf of the Board of Trade. Both Meakin and Tinsley were honest about their failures to abide by the rules and their generally lax behaviour. The report to the Board of Trade laid the blame squarely on Meakin and Tinsley.

This disastrous collision was thus due to want of discipline on the part of the signalmen, first by changing duty at an unauthorised hour, which caused Tinsley to be occupied in writing up the Train Register Book, and so diverted his attention from his proper work, secondly by Meakin handing over the duty in a very lax manner; and, thirdly by both signalmen neglecting to carry out various rules specially framed for preventing accidents due to forgetfulness on the part of signalmen.

The report was also critical of Fireman Hutchinson for his failure to comply properly with rule 55, and also of Alexander Thorburn, the stationmaster at Gretna who had responsibility for Quintinshill signal box and who could not have been unaware of the irregular shift changes operated by Meakin and Tinsley.

The report also concluded that even had all the trains been lit by electricity then fire would still have occurred as the wagons of the goods train in the down loop caught fire. He also concluded that had Quintinshill been equipped with track circuiting then the accident would have been avoided as the electrical interlocking of the signals would have prevented Tinsley from pulling the relevant signal levers, but that with its simple layout and good visibility from the signal box Quintinshill was a low priority for track circuits to be installed.

Tinsley, Meakin and Hutchinson were committed on a charge of manslaughter and were granted bail. It was then decided to proceed against the three men in Scotland, all pleading not guilty to the charges of culpable homicide and breach of duty against them. The trial lasted a day and a half; after the prosecution had concluded their case, the Lord Justice General instructed the jury that there was no case to answer against Hutchinson. The jury retired to consider their verdicts on Tinsley and Meakin at 12.40 pm and returned only eight minutes later finding them guilty as charged. Tinsley was sentenced to three years penal servitude and Meakin to eighteen months imprisonment. Conspiracy theories abound, especially if you consider the next paragraph.

After release, Tinsley went straight back to working on the Caledonian railway as a lampman. He died in 1967. Meakin also returned to the railway, as a goods train guard. Some years later he was made redundant from that job and set himself up as a coal merchant, trading from Quintinshill siding, right next to the scene of the crash. In the Second World War, he worked in the Gretna munitions factory until he retired due to ill health. He died in 1953.