Danger on the Line :Part 3

Concluding the series featuring unpublished material from Dr. Tolson's investigations into accidents on the St. Helens and Runcorn Gap Railway.

Part 2 closed with an example of the dangers involved in drivers splitting their trains and allowing the carriages to run into termini under the control of only the guard. More examples follow.

On 1st August, 1857 the same manoeuvre almost had a similar result, but on this occasion the guard, John Duckworth, stuck to his post and although the main brakes failed, he succeeded in retarding progress sufficiently by applying the brakes in the luggage van, so that no one was hurt. Only eleven days later an engine became derailed just as it went forward to the siding points with the train gathering speed behind it, but the Newall patent brakes, which were by then fitted into luggage vans, again saved the day and the guard, James Ramsdale, was able to avoid loss of life at the cost of only slight damage to the locomotive and leading coach.

Such antics did not only take place in St. Helens but also at Warrington Arpley, where the engine ran ahead into a siding so that the coaches could run into a platform. On Christmas Day 1857, however, the defects of this practice, as well as some other irregularities perhaps unknown to the higher echelons of the management, were revealed to the unfriendly gaze of the Board of Trade Inspector, Captain Tyler. The coaches of a St. Helens Railway train from Runcorn Gap crashed into the rear of the 8-45 p.m. W&S train to Manchester, as it stood in the platform at Arpley Station. The regular guard had left the train at Runcorn Gap and a porter had covered his duties as far as Sankey Bridges, where the ticket collector took over, no doubt to allow his colleague to get home for the festive season. Unfortunately as the coaches approached the platform he turned the handle of the Newall brake the wrong way and a rather violent collision resulted with ten passengers injured. The stationmaster, guard and porter were all dismissed, the former mainly for failing to report the guard for persistent neglect of duty. The Board of Trade insisted that such practices ceased forthwith at Arpley station, although they continued unabated on the rest of the system.

We conclude with two incidents in the last months of independent operation of the Railway.

On Friday, 27th May 1864, an accident occurred at Runcorn Gap, in which several people were seriously injured. What was described as a 'luggage train' was waiting on the main Warrington-Garston line near Widnes Junction, while another of the same type was being shunted out of the way to let it pass, when the driver of a Warrington bound passenger train, seeing the signals off, continued at a fair pace into the rear of the freight, smashing several coal wagons in the process. Luckily the driver of the freight, seeing that the passenger train was not going to stop, was able to get his train on the move and thus lessen the force of the inevitable collision.

One of John Tolson's own photographs used to illustrate his book, The St. Helens Railway, Its Rivals and Successors: The Oakwood Press, 1983, ISBN 0853612927. It shows the remains of the swing bridge which carried the railway onto Spike Island, across the Sankey Canal. The capstan in the foreground, by which the bridge was turned, bore the casting: HAIGH IRON WORKS 1832. Doubtless it ended up in bits in a local scrapyard, but perhaps it survived somehow.

The last fatal accident took place at St. Helens Junction on Monday 18th July 1864, when a woman carrying a four year old child, the youngest of seven, attempted to board a passenger train which was being shunted along the platform, and fell under the carriage. She managed to save the child, although it lost its left arm and two fingers on its right hand. It appears the normal practice was for a train to let its passengers get out at the western end of the platform and then shunt the coaches up to the little wooden booking office at the other end while the engine ran round. No effort was made to fasten doors, or to employ a porter to keep passengers away during this manoeuvre, and a scathing editorial appeared in the St. Helens Newspaper of 20th July 1864 beginning with the words :

The accidents which had occurred on the short but ill-constructed and badly managed St. Helens Railway last week reached an awful crowning, and we will venture to hope, a closing climax, in the shocking and fatal accident which occurred at St. Helens Junction by which a poor woman lost her life and the life of a child was placed in great danger.

A fitting epitaph perhaps for a railway where accidents occurred not merely because of misdemeanours and carelessness by railway servants hidden from the official gaze in yards and collieries, but because of what appears to us its almost flagrant disregard for the safety of the travelling public, as the practices described above so vividly typify, although we must bear in mind that these were common on many railways at that time.

More of John Tolson's photographs from the 60s and 70s:
	Left: The scene featured on our index page from the other side of the Sankey. Bottom: Two scenes which were not used in his book: Left: The swing bridge over the Sankey at Sankey Bridges, from the south. The Mersey White Lead Works beyond have largely been demolished, although the office buildings at the front are being renovated at present. Bottom right: A diesel loco pushing a coal train to Fiddlers Ferry Power Station has just crossed the swing bridge, and is passing through the former station at Sankey Bridges.

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