Two

rail accident A train accident or train wreck is a type of disaster involving one or more trains. Train wrecks often occur as a result of miscommunication, as when a moving train meets another train on the same track, when the wheels of train come off the ...

s have occurred near

Castlecary Castlecary () is a small historic village in North Lanarkshire, Scotland, directly adjacent to the border with Falkirk Council, Falkirk. It has long been associated with infrastructure, being adjacent to Red Burn, a bridged river, a Castra, Roma ...

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

rear-end collision A rear-end collision, often called rear-ending or, in the UK, a shunt, occurs when a forward-moving vehicle crashes into the back of another vehicle (often stationary) in front of it. Similarly, rear-end classification of railway accidents, ra ...

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

1937 accident

On 10 December 1937 at 4:37 p.m., the 4:03 p.m.

Edinburgh Waverley Edinburgh Waverley (also known simply as Edinburgh; ) is the principal railway station serving Edinburgh, Scotland. It is the second busiest station in Scotland, after Glasgow Central. The station serves as the northern terminus of the East C ...

Glasgow Queen Street Glasgow Queen Street () is a passenger railway terminus serving the city centre of Glasgow, Scotland. It is the smaller of the city's two mainline railway terminals (the larger being Glasgow Central) and is the third-busiest station in Scotland ...

express train collided at Castlecary station with the late-running 2:00 p.m. express train from

Dundee Dundee (; ; or , ) is the List of towns and cities in Scotland by population, fourth-largest city in Scotland. The mid-year population estimate for the locality was . It lies within the eastern central Lowlands on the north bank of the Firt ...

to Glasgow Queen Street on the

Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

Glasgow Glasgow is the Cities of Scotland, most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, west central Scotland. It is the List of cities in the United Kingdom, third-most-populous city in the United Kingdom ...

main line of the

London and North Eastern Railway The London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) was the second largest (after London, Midland and Scottish Railway, LMS) of the "Big Four (British railway companies), Big Four" railway companies created by the Railways Act 1921 in Britain. It ope ...

(LNER), killing 35 people. Snow was falling at the time of the accident. 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 The NBR J Class (LNER Classes D29 & D30), commonly known as the Scott class, were a class of 4-4-0 steam tender locomotives designed by William P. Reid for the North British Railway. They passed to the London and North Eastern Railway at the g ...

№ 9896 ''Dandie Dinmont'', was pushed forward . The

locomotive A locomotive is a rail transport, rail vehicle that provides the motive power for a train. Traditionally, locomotives pulled trains from the front. However, Push–pull train, push–pull operation has become common, and in the pursuit for ...

of the Edinburgh train,

LNER Class A3 The London and North Eastern Railway Gresley Classes A1 and A3 were "Pacific" steam locomotives designed by Nigel Gresley for passenger work. They were initially intended for use on the Great Northern Railway (GNR), but became a standard desi ...

№ 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, and 179 people were hurt, of whom 24 were detained in hospital. ''

The Scotsman ''The Scotsman'' is a Scottish compact (newspaper), 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 ...

'' 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 homicide (illegal killing of a person) either with or without an intention to kill depending upon how a pa ...

(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 a ...

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

Causes

At around the time of the accident, snow was falling, but the signalman at Castlecary claimed that it did not affect visibility to the extent of needing to take any special precautions. A set of

points A point is a small dot or the sharp tip of something. Point or points may refer to: Mathematics * Point (geometry), an entity that has a location in space or on a plane, but has no extent; more generally, an element of some abstract topologica ...

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

signal A signal is both the process and the result of transmission of data over some media accomplished by embedding some variation. Signals are important in multiple subject fields including signal processing, information theory and biology. In ...

was therefore at "danger". The Dundee train ran past the signal, and the signalman at Castlecary thought it was not going to stop at all, and therefore telegraphed "train running away" to the next signal box. In fact the train stopped 325 yards beyond the home signal. The Castlecary signalman failed to check the Dundee train's whereabouts, and also failed to consider that a train running past the home signal at danger might indicate some fault with the signals, and allowed the following Edinburgh train into the section. Shortly before the Edinburgh train arrived, the fireman of the Dundee train entered the signal box to say that the Dundee train had stopped just beyond the platform. The signalman now knew that the line was not clear and made a last-minute attempt to stop the Edinburgh train, but this also ran past the home signal and collided with the Dundee train. The drivers of both trains survived, and both claimed that the Castlecary

distant signal The application of railway signals on a rail layout is determined by various factors, principally the location of points of potential conflict, as well as the speed and frequency of trains and the movements they require to make. Non-provisio ...

was showing "clear". The inspecting officer was not able to verify this, and placed the blame on the Castlecary signalman for accepting the Edinburgh train without first ascertaining what had become of the Dundee train.

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) 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 three-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