Stratford Collision

I am going to search through my library for the report of this accident. More later.

I think from memory that the 1953 collision was the second of the four accidents, the first being in 1946 only a few days after the line had opened from Liverpool St to Stratford.

I stand corrected.

I was interested in this accident as my father was detrained as a result of the accident - fortunately not travelling in a train involved in it.

The Full Ministry of Transport Report:

Report on the Collision which occurred on 8th April 1953 near Stratford on the Central Line London Transport Executive

(2 Mb file: .pdf)

can be downloaded from the link at:

www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/listing.php?showSearch=true&text=&startYear=all&endYear=all&development=all&category=all&author=all&publisher=all&published=all&submit=Go&event=109


OngarParkNRide

If it helps, the actual report is at www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/MoT_Stratford1953.pdf.

While I'm at it - I've converted the search page to a tiny url for you! tinyurl.com/35sysf

You are welcome, Mr Ongarparknride, hope you didn't think I was interfering. I have found that www.tinyurl.com is also a very useful resource when you get a stupidly long links to post!

At what speed could a train that had applied the rule actually achieve?

Stratford Collisions (1946, 1953, 1979)

On 5 December, 1947, a signal failure on the Central line near Stratford meant that trains running on that section of line had to follow 'stop and proceed' rules, allowing them to continue very slowly past a red light after having waited for a minute. However, an empty train carrying three signalling staff sent to investigate the cause of the signal failure soon crashed into the back of the empty train in front of it at around 10mph, trapping the driver and the signal staff in the cab, with one of the men dying before they could be rescued. The cause of the accident was simply that the driver had not followed the rules.
On the evening of 8 April, 1953, signal failures led to delays on the Central line once more, with drivers again following 'stop and proceed' rules. However, a train heading eastbound towards Epping ploughed into the back of a stationary train waiting in the tunnel between Stratford and Leyton just before 7pm, leaving twelve passengers dead and many wounded. The driver was hurt but survived and was later charged with having ignored the 'stop and proceed' rules by a Public Inquiry.
A third accident occurred just west of Stratford on 24 January, 1979, just after signal failures prompted an investigation on the open-air section of line west of the station. Following the 'stop and proceed' rules, a train containing passengers headed slowly along the westbound line so that a technician on board could look for faults in the wiring. A second passenger train then ran into the back of the first, injuring a handful of passengers. Once more the cause was a lack of caution when proceeding through a red light, and the driver of the second train was rightly given the full blame for the accident.

tinyurl.com/3axry7

A few, although I think the most recent was the driver of the train at Purley who missed a Stop signal.

news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/4/newsid_2515000/2515219.stm

www.rail-reg.gov.uk/upload/pdf/incident-watfordsouthjunction.pdf

There were two collisions between Leyton & Stratford about two years apart,one EB,one WB.In the WB collision the driver unfortunately died.I was on nights that night and the train that hit the rear of the train in front returned to Hainault about 4 am being pushed by a battery loco.The car had been cut away to the first pair of doors,all that was left was the sole bar and you could see the first pair of wheels were stained red with blood,not very nice.They actually made a good unit out of the two units involved I believe it ended up as 1732-2542-9543-1543.

To clarify on Towerman's above two posts, the two accidents between Leyton and Stratford were in 1979, as detailed above, and then in August 1984. They were both on the Westbound, in almost the same place. I did get some photos of the cars from the 1984 crash in Hainault depot the night after the crash - quite sobering.

As to the Marble Arch crash, in fact the two crew were in the leading cab, but one of them should have been in the rear cab, due to the nature of the defect. As stated, the train was also travelling a lot faster than it should have done with that defect. I also got some long distance photos of the cars involved in that crash, while they were sitting on one of the outside roads at Ruislip depot.