Two

rail accident Classification of railway accidents, both in terms of cause and effect, is a valuable aid in studying rail (and other) accidents to help to prevent similar ones occurring in the future. Systematic investigation for over 150 years has led to the r ...

s have occurred near

Castlecary Castlecary () is a small historic village in North Lanarkshire, Scotland, directly adjacent to the border with Falkirk. It has long been associated with infrastructure, being adjacent to a bridged river, a Roman fort and roads, a nationwide can ...

, Scotland. One of these was in 1937 and one in 1968. Both events involved

rear-end collision A rear-end collision (often called simply rear-end or in the UK a shunt) occurs when a vehicle crashes into the one in front of it. Common factors contributing to rear-end collisions include driver inattention or distraction, tailgating, panic ...

s, and caused the deaths of 35 and 2 people respectively.

1937 accident

On 10 December 1937 at 4:37 pm, the 4:03 pm

Edinburgh Waverley Edinburgh Waverley railway station (also known simply as Waverley; gd, Waverley Dhùn Èideann) is the principal railway station serving Edinburgh, Scotland. It is the second busiest station in Scotland, after Glasgow Central. It is the north ...

Glasgow Queen Street , symbol_location = gb , symbol = rail , image = Queen Street railway station (geograph 6687389).jpg , caption = Main entrance in 2020 , borough = Glasgow , country = Scotland , coordinates = , grid_name = Grid reference , grid_positi ...

express train collided at Castlecary station with the late-running 2:00 pm express train from

Dundee Dundee (; sco, Dundee; gd, Dùn Dè or ) is Scotland's fourth-largest city and the 51st-most-populous built-up area in the United Kingdom. The mid-year population estimate for 2016 was , giving Dundee a population density of 2,478/km2 or ...

to Glasgow Queen Street on the

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...

Glasgow Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...

main line of the

London and North Eastern Railway The London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) was the second largest (after LMS) of the " Big Four" railway companies created by the Railways Act 1921 in Britain. It operated from 1 January 1923 until nationalisation on 1 January 1948. At th ...

(LNER), killing 35 people. At the time of the accident, whiteout conditions prevailed due to a snowstorm. The Edinburgh train hit the rear of the standing Dundee train at an estimated . Due to the confines of the location, the rear four coaches of the Dundee train disintegrated completely. The engine of the Dundee train, an LNER Class D29 no. 9896 ''Dandie Dinmont'', was pushed forward with the brakes on. The

locomotive A locomotive or engine is a rail transport vehicle that provides the Power (physics), motive power for a train. If a locomotive is capable of carrying a payload, it is usually rather referred to as a multiple unit, Motor coach (rail), motor ...

of the Edinburgh train,

LNER Class A3 The London and North Eastern Railway LNER Gresley Classes A1 and A3 locomotives represented two distinct stages in the history of the British "Pacific" steam locomotives designed by Nigel Gresley. They were designed for main line passenger se ...

no. 2744 ''Grand Parade'', was damaged beyond repair (and was replaced by a new engine with the same number and name in April 1938).

Aftermath

The death toll was 35 (including 7 train crew) and 179 people were hurt, most of them seriously. ''

The Scotsman ''The Scotsman'' is a Scottish compact newspaper and daily news website headquartered in Edinburgh. First established as a radical political paper in 1817, it began daily publication in 1855 and remained a broadsheet until August 2004. Its par ...

'' published a detailed list of all the killed and injured''.'' An eight-year-old girl was counted as missing (some locals swore to seeing her ghost for many years). The driver of the Edinburgh train was committed to court on a charge of

culpable homicide Culpable homicide is a categorisation of certain offences in various jurisdictions within the Commonwealth of Nations which involves the illegal killing of a person either with or without an intention to kill depending upon how a particular j ...

(the Scottish equivalent of manslaughter) for supposedly driving too fast for the weather conditions, but the charge was dropped. The Inspecting Officer concluded that it was the signalman who was principally at fault for the disaster. This was Britain's worst snow-related rail crash, others of note being Elliot Junction in 1906 and

Abbots Ripton Abbots Ripton is a village and civil parish in Cambridgeshire, England. Abbots Ripton is situated within Huntingdonshire which is a non-metropolitan district of Cambridgeshire as well as being an historic county of England. Abbots Ripton lies ap ...

in 1876. A full length part animated, part documentary film about the incident and its effects was made in 2020.

Causes

The whiteout meant that visibility was no more than a few yards and so the signalmen on this stretch of line were operating Regulation 5e. This meant that a double section had to be clear ahead for a train to be signalled to pass the previous box, Greenhill Junction. A set of

points Point or points may refer to: Places * Point, Lewis, a peninsula in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland * Point, Texas, a city in Rains County, Texas, United States * Point, the NE tip and a ferry terminal of Lismore, Inner Hebrides, Scotland * Point ...

ahead had been blocked by snow and caused several trains to back up and the Castlecary home

signal In signal processing, a signal is a function that conveys information about a phenomenon. Any quantity that can vary over space or time can be used as a signal to share messages between observers. The ''IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing'' ...

was therefore at 'danger'. The Dundee train ran past that signal in poor visibility but managed to stop just beyond it. The Castlecary signalman failed to check the train’s whereabouts and allowed the following Edinburgh train into the section. This also ran past the same signal and collided with the Dundee train. It is believed that the Castlecary distant signal had stuck in the 'off' ('clear') position and so the drivers of both trains took it that the line was clear. The driver of the Edinburgh train only realised that it was not when he crossed the viaduct and saw that the home signal was at 'danger'. Even a modern road vehicle would not have stopped in the remaining to the tail lamp (which was flattened).

1968 accident

A second accident occurred in Castlecary on 9 September 1968, also a rear-end collision. Following the failure of a signal at Greenhill Junction, trains were required (by

Rule 55 Rule 55 was an operating rule which applied on British railways in the 19th and 20th centuries. It was superseded by the modular rulebook following re- privatisation of the railways. It survives, very differently named: the driver of a train wai ...

) to stop at the failed signal and report their presence to Signalman D. Craig at Greenhill Junction via the signal telephone. He would allow them to proceed slowly past the signal, at around , and then report on passing the signal to continue to obey previous signals. This method had worked since the signal's failure the night before and throughout the early morning, but at 09:00, Craig became confused by the presence of four different trains in the Greenhill area. Of these trains, the Down 07:40 Dundee-Glasgow service passed through Greenhill uneventfully, but its passage resulted in Craig being forced to hold the Down 08:30 Edinburgh-Glasgow service north of Greenhill Junction. At the same time, the Up 08:46 Glasgow-Edinburgh service driven by Driver W. Watson, consisting of two six-car Class 126 DMUs, stopped at the failed signal, and when Watson contacted Craig on the telephone, Craig misunderstood the call, believing Watson to be the Down train, and told him that he was waiting for a train at Greenhill Junction. The mistake was furthered by Watson's failure to identify his train. Shortly after, Class 24 engine D5122, crewed by Driver W. McIntosh and Secondman R. Birrell, running light from Glasgow to Perth, arrived at the signal in rear of the Up train. Birrell contacted Craig at Greenhill. Like Watson, Birrell failed to identify his train; in combination with Birrell’s impatient tone, this led Craig to repeat the mistake - again believing that he was speaking to the Up DMU at the failed signal. (Its Rule 55 call had been overdue for some minutes.) He gave Birrell authority to pass the signal ahead at danger, at caution speed. D5122 then set off, but McIntosh took his engine to around . As result, when the Up DMU became visible to him, he was unable to stop in time and collided with the rear of the Up DMU. Both trainmen were killed instantly. Mere seconds after the collision, the Down line cleared and the Down DMU proceeded, suffering minor damage from a jutting piece of debris scraping the cab. The report by Colonel I.K.A. McNaughton in 1970 agreed that the accident was due to a combination of Craig's confusion in identifying the trains, furthered by Birrell and Watson's failure to identify their trains, and that Driver McIntosh had driven his train at an unsafe speed past the signal.

References

Sources

* * *

External links

*
The official report of the 1937 crash

The account and official report of the 1968 crash
in the Railways Archive
British Pathe newsreel of crash
{{coord, 55.98045, -3.94880, type:landmark_region:GB_source:enwiki-osgb36(NS785781), display=title Train collisions in Scotland Railway accidents in 1937 Railway accidents in 1968 1937 disasters in the United Kingdom 1937 in Scotland 1968 in Scotland History of North Lanarkshire History of Falkirk (council area) Transport in North Lanarkshire Transport in Falkirk (council area) Accidents and incidents involving London and North Eastern Railway Accidents and incidents involving British Rail Lists of railway accidents and incidents in Scotland Railway accidents caused by signaller's error 1968 disasters in the United Kingdom