The LNER Encyclopedia

A number of our members may be familiar with Goswick near Berwick upon Tweed as i have posted a few times regarding crashes and unlucky locations. There have been 3 major accidents but now a friend has passed some information on a fourth incident. I have posted the pics below, they are from a 1922 copy of the illustrated London News and show the aftermath of a derailment when the Scotch Express hit a herd of cows. The loco looks like an NER 4-6-0 and as usual im looking for more information. Anyone heard(excuse the pun) anything about this one.

Sorry I don't have any info on this incident. However, I work on the railway today and a couple of years ago one of our trains had a similar incident involving 5 cows near Burton-On-Trent. As it arrived into Derby to be taken out of service you could smell the train before you could see it! The front was an interesting variety of red and brown colours.

My train was the first one past the debris at 5mph. Debris stretched along the best part of one mile (they had been hit at 110mph...) and one carcass ended upside down in an adjacent field. As it was off railway property it remained there for some days - an 'interesting' sight.

Your photo shows the kind of damage hitting such solid objects can cause: most of the travelling public seem unaware that the average cow is over 1 tonne in weight and each one is equivalent to hitting a road vehicle.

Trains hitting livestock are not rare events and there was a substantial increase in such incidents at the height of the last major Foot and Mouth outbreak: farmers are traditionally compensated by the railway if a train kills livestock, since it is the railway that maintains the trackside fencing and gates. Mysteriously a larger number of field gates than normal were found to have been left open during the last F&M outbreak...