Busaholic
Veteran Member
- Joined
- 7 Jun 2014
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- 14,671
Having recently joined this forum,I'd like to introduce something that has been bothering me, off and on, for almost fifty years, in the hope that somebody here may be able to elucidate.
The Hither Green accident was one of the worst in British railway history with forty fatalities. A diesel-electric train from Hastings to Charing Cross came off the line just to the south pf Hither Green Station in S.E. London. The accident report blamed a broken rail. No other trains were involved.
At the time I was a teenager living within a few miles of the crash scene: in fact, I was waiting on the platform at Grove Park station for a Charing Cross 'stopper' when the fateful train came hurrying through.
From what I remember of news reports in the hours and days after the crash there was a lot of talk of excess speed and the train 'just swaying from side to side and falling off the track.' I believe the Accident Report absolved the driver of speeding.
Where this accident happened was adjacent to the South Circular Road. Londoners will be mostly aware that, unlike the North Circular, this is no purpose-built road but a name given to a succession of disparate, mostly down-at-heel roads roughly linked. The South Circular, at this point actually St Mildreds Road, passed under the railway bridge where it all started.
Now every school day from autumn 1959 until 1966 my bus route to/from school took me past this very spot. On a day which I can only narrow down to being in 1960 or possibly 1961 I was amazed to see a steam loco and tender lying on its side adjacent to the track, only yards from the main road. There it remained for several days until, one morning, it had gone. Whether this ever made the local paper (Kentish Mercury, Lewisham edition) I cannot say or any railway magazine. I did try writing to the Mercury after the 1967 crash to remind them of this incident but neither received a reply or ever saw any mention of the coincidence of one steam loco and one electric train both falling off the line at almost exactly the same point a few years apart (and, I think, exactly the same line.)
Anyone with any knowledge of this first incident, and was it also due to a broken rail?
The Hither Green accident was one of the worst in British railway history with forty fatalities. A diesel-electric train from Hastings to Charing Cross came off the line just to the south pf Hither Green Station in S.E. London. The accident report blamed a broken rail. No other trains were involved.
At the time I was a teenager living within a few miles of the crash scene: in fact, I was waiting on the platform at Grove Park station for a Charing Cross 'stopper' when the fateful train came hurrying through.
From what I remember of news reports in the hours and days after the crash there was a lot of talk of excess speed and the train 'just swaying from side to side and falling off the track.' I believe the Accident Report absolved the driver of speeding.
Where this accident happened was adjacent to the South Circular Road. Londoners will be mostly aware that, unlike the North Circular, this is no purpose-built road but a name given to a succession of disparate, mostly down-at-heel roads roughly linked. The South Circular, at this point actually St Mildreds Road, passed under the railway bridge where it all started.
Now every school day from autumn 1959 until 1966 my bus route to/from school took me past this very spot. On a day which I can only narrow down to being in 1960 or possibly 1961 I was amazed to see a steam loco and tender lying on its side adjacent to the track, only yards from the main road. There it remained for several days until, one morning, it had gone. Whether this ever made the local paper (Kentish Mercury, Lewisham edition) I cannot say or any railway magazine. I did try writing to the Mercury after the 1967 crash to remind them of this incident but neither received a reply or ever saw any mention of the coincidence of one steam loco and one electric train both falling off the line at almost exactly the same point a few years apart (and, I think, exactly the same line.)
Anyone with any knowledge of this first incident, and was it also due to a broken rail?
