Charfield accident on R4

[kudu]

Punt PI is on the Charfield accident - 1030 am today (Sat 15th) Radio 4.

Discussing possible signalling sabotage or colour-blind fireman, amongst other theories.

Kudu

[Mickey]

Deleted

[kudu]

It was the mystery of the children that the programme was largely concerned with. For a possible explanation you need to listen to it! (On listen-again, of course.)

Kudu

[Mickey]

Deleted

[kudu]

Not a repeat. The missing children mystery was the trigger for the whole programme. As I said before, it finishes with a possible explanation for the mystery, as well as speculates on the cause of the accident itself.

Kudu

[Totnes]

TO LNER website:

The Punt PI programmes "jazz up" any subject they are looking into. This makes a mockery of any real attempt to find out the truth. The programmes telescope events as badly as the coaches in many a train crash.


Concerning the Charfield accident:


1. The footplate crew's claim that the distant signal was clear contradicts the refuge siding's reversed points with the goods train backing into it at the time. Yet the driver's – and fireman's –evidence was that it was showing green.


But think of the number of times drivers have cancelled the ATC or AWS and run through yellows and reds. Did they expect it to be green, and their minds told them it was?


There would have to have been a strange coincidence for someone to have pulled the signal wire for the arm to have moved to show green just as a train was completing a shunt. But the Titanic hit the iceberg. Or had a farm animal got onto the line and snagged the wire? This was around
0515-20 hrs on a dark morning in October.


2. The Desborough connection ignores the fact that Mrs Alice May Desborough was described as a widow when she was in court in 1937. Unless she had later married a man with the same surname as her parents, then she would not have been called Desborough in 1928. She would have had her maiden name.


Thus there was no link between a supposed unclaimed suitcase with a Desborough label and the woman.


Aged 26½ in 1937, she would have been in her late teens in 1928 and, had she been on the train and survived the accident – in which she claimed her parents and two or three siblings died – then she would have been quite able to have told anyone who she was and what had happened to the rest of her family.


The whole part of the programme – about the royal connection and Hampton Court, India, mixed race children, etc was complete nonsense – all based on the false Desborough link. The label might have meant the suitcase had at some time been sent to or from the town of Desborough. The school blazer badge could have related to Truro School for Girls as much as to Queen Ethelburga’s School, wrongly called Saint Etherlburga’s in the programme. Both boys and girls wear blazers.

3. In the 1920s and 1930s there was a great belief in spiritualism, etc. The effects of the Great War were still being felt. The Angel of Mons story about angels saving large numbers of British troops from being killed in an attack was believed; Conan Doyle believed that the (cut-out cardboard) fairies two girls claimed to have photographed in their garden were real. So the idea that two unknown children had died at Charfield fitted in with the mindset of the day. That a woman in black certainly did visit the graveyard year after year only added to the belief.


4. The accident has three unexplained elements:


a. What aspect was the distant signal actually showing when the mail/passenger train passed it?
For the arm not to have returned to caution after it had last been pulled – but the signalman not to
have noticed the repeater was still showing off – is another unlikely possibility. The goods train
backing into the refuge siding would have been admitted into the station with the distant at
caution. Would the interlocking have allowed the siding points to have been reversed with the
distant’s lever at normal, but the repeater showing clear? Sabotage at five in the morning at a
country station is just as unlikely.


b. Why, when the official report blamed the driver for the crash, did he did not answer charges of
multiple manslaughter in court? Since there appears to have been no record as to what happened
to him after the crash, was he considered unfit to plead?


c. Why have so many stories been built around those who were killed in the accident? The
combination of the ethos of the time, plus the two small boxes for body parts not those of any
whole corpse and the Desborough woman’s claims is a powerful one. And we all like mysteries.

[StevieG]

Just a comment on part of your 4.a.'s second paragraph, Totnes :

"Would the interlocking have allowed the siding points to have been reversed with the distant’s lever at normal, but the repeater showing clear?"

I would think that those times were sufficiently early in railway signalling that 'interlocking' at a place like Charfield would have been almost entirely mechanical, so the probable answer to your specific query is 'Yes', and is most likely the same even today in mechanical boxes.
But a situation like the Charfield collision where Absolute Block signalling operates can be prevented somewhat by controls on the Block Instrument which prevent "Line Clear" being given to the previous signal box for a following train if the Distant signal repeater is showing 'OFF', or 'WRONG'(not properly in either Caution or Clear position). This is a control that has been available for very many years, though whether this particular one of the many electrical safety add-ons to the basic Block system over the many decades, would have been in place then at Charfield, is questionable - I would have thought unlikely.

[Mickey]

Deleted

[richard]

LTC Rolt answers point 4B: Henry Adlington (driver of the express) WAS "committed to Assizes on a charge of manslaughter but was very properly acquitted". Basically there's a lot of doubt elsewhere - including the state of the wire to the Distant Repeater (which was caught by accident debris).

ATC was not fitted, but was recommended by Colonel Pringle in the accident investigation.

(pp246-7, Red for Danger, 4th edition)

[Totnes]

LTC Rolt answers point 4B: Henry Adlington (driver of the express) WAS "committed to Assizes on a charge of manslaughter but was very properly acquitted". Basically there's a lot of doubt elsewhere - including the state of the wire to the Distant Repeater (which was caught by accident debris).

ATC was not fitted, but was recommended by Colonel Pringle in the accident investigation.

(pp246-7, Red for Danger, 4th edition)

Thank you, Stevie G, Micky and Richard for your comments on my posting about the Charfield accident.

In my paperback edition of Red for Danger, Rolt says (page 205) "Investigation then showed that the arm of the distant signal was drooping 20 degrees owing to the wreckage of the collision lying upon the signal wire and that when this was removed it flew back to danger."

Rolt says "danger" not "caution" even though it was a distant signal. There is also the question as to whether the "on" light for the distant would have been red or yellow, since the standardisation of yellow for distants was apparently still in progress.

Rolt makes no mention of the condition of the electrical wire for the repeater; but he does say that, with the lower quadrant signal arm drooping 20 degrees owing to the wreckage, the repeater was showing clear, even though the green aspect would not have been seen from the footplate of an approaching train.

I do not understand Rolt saying Aldington "was very properly acquitted". Was "reasonable doubt" the answer? It was the driver and his fireman's word against the irrefutable fact that the lever for the distant signal could not have been pulled because of the box's interlocking. The Punt PI programme claimed the case was dismissed, rather than the driver being found not guilty.

He also says that Charfield box had rotary three-position instruments to enforce the proper sequence of indications: Line Blocked, Line Clear, Train on Line.

There was also the coincidence of another goods train passing through Charfield while one was backing into the refuge siding. Had the up goods not been there the damage would have been much less.

[strang steel]

Rolt is only repeating the words that the inspector uses.

But they are just words. All the distant signal does is give advance warning of the state of the home signals in the section.

May I suggest reading the actual report on the accident,

http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/docume ... ld1928.pdf

The relevant section on the distant signal will be found on page 10.

It does not seem to be possible to copy and paste the paragraphs here, at least not with my laptop.

[richard]

I think the fact that this thread exists demonstrates that there is a lot of doubt as to what exactly happened! Would you want to be found guilty of manslaughter under such evidence? I don't think so.

[strang steel]

I agree Richard.

The jury had to consider many aspects of the case, and could never be sure beyond reasonable doubt that any of the deaths were caused by the loco crew.

The problems with gas on trains must have been a big contributory factor in the deaths of many who may have escaped had the coaches not caught alight. Then there was the question of the wooden bodied stock to consider.

As a meteorologist, I know only too well the fickle nature of fog patches especially at that time of the morning and in that area. It is quite possible to go from good visibility to less than 50 yards in a very short distance, and then come out of the fog just as quickly again a little further on.


Tragic as such cases are, I think that the dismissal of a manslaughter charge was the only fair way for the court to proceed.