First Accident due to a design fault?

Surely not the 92ts following the Chancery Lane derailment...

Probably way way to recent

Didn't the D-stock have a derailment due it's bogies?

I'm sure there have been accidents down to train design in the past. Has LU ever had any serious fires, such as the one that occured on the Paris metro early in the 1900s which was down to traction control design?

There will have been many incidents that have happened as a result of design problems. If we go back to the line that I have the greatest interest in, that is certainly the case. We have previously discussed how the Ashbury carriages hit the sides of the tunnels on the curve at King William Street as the result of a design fault.
The carriages had been designed to fit the tunnels and the curves, but some curves were tighter than planned. Unfortunately the specifications of the carriages were not altered before they were delivered, resulting in the problem.
I think that there will be a whole chain of accidents that can be found on various lines, if you know where to look. The question must arise though, how do you define an accident for the purpose of this question?

What about the fire on the Picc in the early eighties?

And how do you define design? Every mechanical failure (such as the fire on the Central with the Standard stock in the 50s) is ultimately down to design, namely that the design engineers never even considered that (such and such) could happen under (these) conditions. That goes for almost all mechanical failures whether they cause accidents or not.

What replaced the D stocks during that time that they were out of commision? C stocks?

The Turnham Green incident happened on the late turn so they stowed most of the fleet and ran half a dozen or so trains to finish the service after carrying out quick checks on a dozen or so trains before hand.

When I booked on the next day only a handful of trains were available for service and they were running a shuttle service IE Upminster to Barking - Barking to Whitechapel etc it took about a week to get a full service running again.

I imagine the same thing applied to the St James incident.

The frightening thing is both Drivers never new anything about it till they got pulled down because they said they never felt a thing because the D stock is so lightweight, same applies to locked axles - drivers never feel a thing because the motors are so good and the train is so light you just drive through it.

I think Chris takes the prize. As far as I know the first accident solely due to a design fault was the TS92 Chancery Lane accident.

Interestingly, this is the first stock not designed in-house!

Ah you're thinking of the first day of electric services on the Circle Line, which turned into just another typical day for that particular service

The date was 1st July 1905 when it was decided that electric working would be introduced on the Outer Rail only. Metropolitan Electric working started at 5:48 am from Aldgate, seven Circle Line trains getting round over the MDR lines, the last three with difficulty, arriving back late. An eighth train did complete the journey over this section but only by being hauled over part of the route by a steam locomotive, arriving back on the Met over three hours late. As soon as the trouble started an electric shuttle service was organised between South Kensington and Aldgate via Kings Cross and this worked well enough for the rest of the day.
The problem arose from three causes. The District at Hammersmith had been flooded by an early morning torrential downpour and this had been followed be a derailment at Mill Hill Park which added to the chaos. However the principal problem was, as the Met report put it, because 'the District road "gave out" at several places'. It seems that the manner in which the collecting shoes had been fixed to the Met cars caused them to slip off the MDR positive conductor rails on some of the sharper curves, overturning the rails or damaging the supports, although there was no similar problem on the Met's own tracks.

Eventually the decision was taken to modify the fixings for the the collector shoes so the matched those use by the District and a partial electric Circle service was introduced from 13th September 1905 with a full electric service in both directions form 24th September.

Wasn't there a fire invoving a tube stock with a power bus line?

Sam