For such a relatively small country, the UK has certainly seen its fair share of railway tragedies particularly around the greater London area and surprisingly, one of them was Clapham Junction, one of the largest and busiest railway junctions in the UK, if not Europe.
At 8:10 on the morning of Monday the 12th of December 1988, a commuter train traveling at around 65 kilometers per hour, ran into the back of another one sitting in a cutting about 800 meters south to Clapham Junction. The impact caused the first train to veer to its right and collide with another oncoming empty train.
35 people died in the accident, all of them in the first two carriages of the first train. The number of injured is unclear but there were at least a hundred, though some reports put the number as high as 400, 69 of them seriously.
First in the scene were people from the nearby Emanuel School who helped saved many lives and received commendations for their actions from the government.
Investigations find that the cause of the accident is faulty wiring. The driver of the 718 from Basingstoke to Waterloo saw a signal change from red to green without turning yellow. Following procedure, he stopped at the next signal telephone to report the anomaly but was advised that there was no fault and he should continue. Before he could do so, the late running 614 from Poole, obeying false precede signals hit his train from behind.
A fourth train also obeying the faulty signals, managed to stop just 60 meters short of the back of the Poole train. It was discovered that sloppy work practices had left an old wire half connected, causing the signal to show green when it should have been red and a supervisor who had noticed the loose wiring didn’t mention it, so as not to rock the boat.
Recommendations were made for the introduction of the automatic train protection system but despite subsequent crashes Southall and Ladbroke Grove, today, these recommendations are still not being acted upon. The inquiry also recommended the phasing out with vulnerable 1950’s rolling stock that again, as of 2005, similar trains was still running on the South London Community Lines.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services