Background
Nuneaton is a town of 94634 people (as of 2021) in central England, located in the West Midlands region 30km/18.5mi east of Birmingham and 26km/16mi southwest of Leicester (both measurements in linear distance).
Nuneaton Station lies on the West Coast Main Line, a double- to six-tracked electrified main line connecting London (England) with Glasgow (Scotland) on 642km/399mi of track along England’s western coast. Opening in sections between 1837 and 1869 the line is one of the UK’s main railway corridors, carrying all sorts of passenger services along with 40% of the UK’s freight traffic, making it one of the busiest freight-corridors in Europe. Nowadays the entire line is electrified via overhead catenaries and is set up for speeds of up to 200kph/125mph.
The Train Involved
The 23:30pm Sleeper was an international overnight passenger express service from London’s Euston Station to Glasgow. It consisted of twelve Mark 1 four-axle sleeper cars, two four-axle baggage cars and a four-axle restaurant car, and by the time it approached Nuneaton it was pulled by a pair of British Rail (BR) Class 86 locomotives (numbered 86 006 and 86 242), with the rear one being towed along “cold”, meaning it didn’t provide traction power. The BR Class 86 is a four-axle multipurpose electric locomotive introduced in 1965 to enable large-scale retirement of steam locomotives. Each Class 86 measures 17.83m/58.6ft in length at a weight of 82 metric tons and can reach up to 177kph/110mph. 100 units were produced within just a year, and the locomotives were used for everything from regional passenger services and freight trains up to international express trains.
The Accident
The 23:30pm Sleeper departs London Euston station right on schedule on the 5th of June 1975, pulled by BR 86 242. The uneventful journey comes to a sudden end just after midnight on the 6th of June, with the locomotive developing a fault and breaking down as it leaves the village of Kings Langley behind. The driver, Mister McKay, finds himself unable to get the train going again, and thus has no choice but to wait for the dispatch center to send help. Help arrives in the form of BR 86 006, which is placed in front of the stranded locomotive. Mister McKay moves to the cab of 86 006 and finally resumes the journey, now running approximately 75 minutes late. The train is now towing 86 242 along “cold” without it producing any power, as if it were a rather heavy train car, but the added weight still leaves the train well within the type’s capabilities.
Heading towards Nuneaton Mister McKay holds the train right at the 129kph/80mph speed limit, but by the time it approaches Nuneaton the delay still sits at 66 minutes. Mister McKay had been instructed of a temporary speed restriction at the southern entrance to Nuneaton station, being told he would have to slow the train to 32kph/20mph due to ongoing construction work. At 1:53am BR 86 006 passes the board announcing the restriction, but, seeing its illumination being turned off, Mister McKay supposedly assumes that the restriction has been lifted and keeps the train at speed. The announcement board is placed 2km/1.25mi ahead of the restriction, a distance the train, still travelling at 129kph/80mph takes 55 seconds to cover. Upon reaching the restricted section Mister McKay is suddenly faced with an illuminated warning board, realizing at once that the announcement board was meant to be illuminated and that the restriction was still very much in place.
Realizing what is about to happen Mister McKay triggers an emergency stop, but the input comes too late to slow the train. Instead, BR 86 006 enters a sharp curve, which was the reason for the speed limit, at three times the intended speed, derailing immediately. BR 86 006 detaches from the rest of the train and carries on in a straight line, threading the needle between platforms and coming to a stop halfway down the station nearly undamaged. BR 86 242 has no such luck as it starts to turn sideways before hitting the end of a plattform, mounting it and having its leading end jammed up against the platform roof. The first two train cars remain upright while cars three to five fall over and run into one another, suffering extensive damage and losing much of their survival space. The rest of the train derails as well, except for the very last car, but these cars remain largely intact. 2 passengers and 2 attendants are killed in the derailment, another two passengers later succumb to their injuries at the hospital. Another 38 passengers survive with injuries requiring hospitalization.
Aftermath
A signalman and his supervisor at the station watch the disaster unfold in front of them and notify emergency services, who arrive within six minutes of the derailment. Responders are met with a sight of sprawling mayhem, aside from the derailed train and the barely identifiable remains of the train’s center section the derailment also uprooted over 415m/452yrd of track, shaved off three supports for the overhead catenary along with various trackside equipment, damaged a road overpass and caused damage to a parked locomotive as pieces of the overhead catenary supports came down on it. Lastly, for the time being BR 86 242 can’t be moved unless responders want the roof of the platform to collapse on top of them.
Some of the train cars were so mangled that it took responders agonizing hours to make progress on accessing survivors. The last survivor wouldn’t be pulled from the wreckage until 7:40am, still almost 10 hours ahead of the last body being recovered. Responders continued combing the wreckage until 11:45am the following day, finding no more victims. It turned out that the train, especially the forward half which suffered the worst destruction, had been almost empty at under 100 people on board. Furthermore, the timing of the accident meant that the station had been largely deserted, one doesn’t want to imagine what would have happened had BR 86 242 mounted a crowded platform at rush hour.
BR 86 006 is just about undamaged apart from being forced off the rails and bumping across the sleepers until it came to a stop, making it unusually easy for investigators to examine it. They find no fault with the locomotive, when the brakes were applied they worked as intended. They had simply been applied over a mile late. There is also no evidence of poor construction of the temporary track, which leaves only human error. Mister McKay, who survived the accident uninjured, thus finds himself arrested. However, during his interrogation he reports that he saw the announcement board sitting there dark, raising suspicion by the investigators. Announcement boards such as the one used at Nuneaton on the day of the accident are arrow-shaped horizontal boards painted bright yellow with a white on black speed restriction sign on top. Two gas powered lamps provide illumination to the board to increase visibility at night.
Investigators found that the sign was indeed meant to be illuminated, but, as several previous trains’ drivers attested, had been off. It was discovered that the main gas tank supplying the lights had run empty, and someone had forgotten to open the valve between it and an additional tank when the additional tank was fitted. Thus, with the main tank empty, the lights went dark. According to the British Rail guidelines a train driver who passes a dark warning sign such as the announcement board has to stop and report the outage, but none of the drivers who passed the sign between 1:10am and 1:40am (the time when the last train ahead of the Sleeper passed it) did so. Some drivers couldn’t explain why they didn’t, while others said they were sure someone had already reported it.
The error by an unidentified construction worker that left the valve closed and the failure of the preceding drivers to report the outage didn’t relieve Mister McKay of his fault, though, since he had been instructed of the restriction ahead of departure. It was argued that, being told that a restriction was in place well past the time when his train would pass the site, he should have been able to figure out that the sign was meant to be illuminated and that the restriction still applied. Furthermore, taking the significant delay into account, the theory was presented that he had been so focused on making up lost time that he forgot about the restriction as a whole. As such he found himself charged with six charges of manslaughter, but was found not guilty after a three-day trial in June 1976. The court decided that he had acted negligently, but not of sufficient negligence, especially considering the other parties involved in what led to the accident, that he could be prosecuted for it.
After the accident BR started integrating temporary speed restrictions into their Automatic Warning System (AWS), a system which sounds a horn in the cab along with showing a visual indicator when approaching a signal. If a train driver fails to acknowledge the warning within a few seconds an automatic stop is triggered. However, in contrast to other modern train control systems, the AWS can only give a warning, with no indication of what it is warning about. Had the low speed zone at Nuneaton been fitted with AWS the horn might have reminded Mister McKay of having to slow down, independent of the gas-lit signage. Those signs are now a thing of the past too, having been replaced by electrically lit signage which literally can’t run out of gas.
Despite suffering severe damage during the derailment BR 86 242 was actually repaired alongside BR 86 006, returning to service a few months after the accident. Number 006 remained in service well into the 2010s, eventually being used for maintenance trains before being retired and scrapped in 2016. Number 242 was sold to a private rail service provider in England in 2001 before being retired in 2004. It sat in storage for 9 years before escaping the scrapper by being sold to Hungary, where it was refurbished and used as Eurogate (formerly Floyd) 0450 008, pulling freight trains. In 2021 Eurogate sold their fleet of former BR Class 86 to VHID, a Hungarian rail infrastructure and construction operator. As of this article being written (August 2023) it appears that the former BR 86 242 is still in service in Hungary.
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