Armagh 1889: The basics

On Wednesday, 12 June 1889 a train carrying 940 men, women and children on a day out to the seaside met with disaster. 80 would be killed in the resulting twin collisions. Yet, out of this tragedy came a glimmer of hope: the Railway Regulation Act 1889 which made it a legal requirement for railways to have interlocking with points and signals; to use the block system of working; and to have automatic, continuous brakes.
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[@misterflibble6601]

A perfect example of why private industries cannot be allowed to regulate themselves! If allowed to, profits and the bottom line will always out way all other considerations including the safety and well being of workers and the public at large

[@bokhans]

Absolutely right, Boeing the airplane manufacturer as a sad example of that the past few years or rather several decades. Management bonuses before passenger safety. Self regulate and self inspection isn’t a way to good performance.

[@garryferrington811]

Very true. The automatic coupler was adopted by American railroads by act of Congress (under pressure from railroad unions.) The standard link-and-pin coupling was deadly, and men were being maimed or killed by the literal thousand, but replacing all of the couplers was expensive.

[@MJC19]

I always get a shiver up my spine when I hear about this absolutely chilling horror story, glad you covered it is an easy and bite-sized way.

[@Jmurky1234]

It happened behind my house a bit.

[@johnclayden1670]

A splendid presentation. I remember first reading about this accident years ago in L.T.C Rolt's book, 'Red for Danger'.

[@felixtheswiss]

Thanks for this story, as a system engineer for railway brakes i always say that brakes are the most important part of a train, here we hear why that is the case!

[@drewzero1]

Same with cars. When making performance modifications, the most important (and most often overlooked) improvement is the brakes. It's no use being able to go if you can't stop!

[@raymondwelsh6028]

I would love to see you cover the Granville railway disaster in Sydney Australia in 1977. 83 deaths and many more injured. It was a classic case of Government and railway management interfering to save money and trying look good. Love your videos and keep them coming.🇦🇺

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

It sounds interesting but sadly, it's well out of my wheelhouse. By about a hundred years!

[@amazingdecks1]

While I don't enjoy hearing about disasters, I do like to hear of effective measures resultant. A very good and informative video - as usual. Thanks.

[@Arkay315]

Unfortunately good regulations usually come after disasters, in Kentucky they only put up guardrails beside roads if someone crashed and died there

[@SDE1994]

theres a good channel called "Fascanating Horror" that talks about various accidents and building collapses all around the world but also goes into the changes of safety, laws and regulations as a result

[@raymondwelsh6028]

I watched another documentary on this incident, the train driver protested vigorously about the added carriages and overloaded train. He was threatened with dismissal if he didn’t take the train out. And unfortunately he yielded to there threats. This can still happen where management sticks there noses in to save money and try and look good. Perhaps a more recent example is The Challenger disaster.🇦🇺

[@Arkay315]

I can't wait for the brake episode

[@raymondwelsh6028]

I read Red For Danger. I was struck by an incident in the mid 18 hundreds prior to lock, block and brake. Trains would be released at 5 minutes intervals. One train stalled in a tunnel and a couple more piled into the wreckage before anything could be stopped. Interesting times when greed ruled.🇦🇺

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

Terrifying times indeed. Just hope we're not going back to them....

[@KPen3750]

the freakiest thing about this disaster to me, is the fact that the men could keep pace with the carriages rolling down the grade, just by walking

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

And that no one thought about spragging the wheels.

[@ajkleipass]

They gave chase with the locomotive and remaining attached cars. It's not clear from this video as to the speeds involved, but the engine would have been blindly running backwards after the runaway with one person giving the engineer signals while another person was trying to recouple the hook-n-chain couplings. Sadly, this could just as easily ended with the two halves of the train colliding, or the runaway section getting sandwiched between its front end and the second train.

[@delurkor]

Very loose connection, my great-grandfather, Richard Moreland, emigrated from County Armagh in the 1880's, and settled in Philadelphia, PA. My sister some years ago found his citizenship papers, where he fore-swore any allegiance to the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland.

[@ajaxengineco]

Incidentally - the BoT did an experiment and found that an engine of the same class actually had no difficulty drawing 15 coaches over the line and that McGrath's stall was quite inexplicable - they put it down to driver inexperience with the route. I am wondering whether the coaches they tested with had any extra weight to simulate passengers?

[@pras12100]

There was another accident (in Victorian or at least pre-WW1 times) where a stand-in guard was found to have turned the brake screw the wrong way when trying to stop a train. Which way to turn the handle was not standardised. Unfortunately I cannot find the reference to it. When I re-read the details of the Armagh 1889 accident I was left wondering whether the porter / acting-guard Thomas Henry did not make a similar mistake in the rear brake-van. If we assume that the hand brake was actually partly on (but not enough to lock the wheels) when the train was travelling up the gradient from Armagh then this could be at least a partial explanation of why the train stalled. This would mean that, once the train was stalled, when Thomas Henry was trying to apply the handbrake he was actually releasing it. The rear brake-van was smashed to pieces in the accident and no-one appears to have considered this afterwards.

[@user-qp9cd5ng3w]

Great video on the Armagh Rail Disaster. It's tragic to hear about the lives lost, but it's good to know that it led to important safety regulations. If you're interested in learning more, I'd also recommend checking out 'The Armagh Rail Disaster, Ireland's Deadliest Rail Crash' by Hand Drawn History

[@paulhitchcock9760]

Good stuff! Looking forward to the piece about train brakes. It's important to remember though that not all lines placed saving money above safety. Notably, the not especially prosperous L.B.S.C.R. adopted the automatic air brake well over ten years before Armagh, even demonstrating the system in France. This system was both crisper in operation and more expensive than the automatic vacuum brake.

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

I'm going to be doing a video on the Newark Brake Trials of 1875. The Caledonian adopted their own air brake in the 1860s and North Eastern were equally quick off the mark with the Westinghouse air brake. I think the biggest vilain of the piece was the LNWR with the Clark & Webb Chain Brake which can't be described as a brake, or the LYR with its own mechanical brake (Newall). The French were experimenting with electrically operated brakes in the 1850s. The LNWR wasn't poor but did think of its shareholders above all else with the absurd situation of West Coast Joint stock having both the chain brake and air brakes.

[@paulhitchcock9760]

@@AnthonyDawsonHistory I suspect that the non automatic vacuum brake may well have been responsible for more deaths than the chain brake.. It was the Newark trials which convinced William Stroudley that the full automatic Westinghouse brake was a necessity. Comparable credit ought to go to his Board for backing him.

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

@@paulhitchcock9760 One mitigating factor for the Clark/Webb Chain Brake was that LNWR expresses seldom ran above 50mph, and were not that heavy: Webb and Moon were quite happy for an LNWR express to jog along about 45mph. The outcome of the Newark trial only served to convice Webb of the correctness of his brake. I suspect it's performance at Newark was that crews had been drilled in its use prior to the trials as its performance at Newark is borne out from accident reports! Same with the Newall. The other major disaster in which the Smith Vacuum Brake had an influence was at Penistone on the MS&LR in 1884, after which Charles Sacre committed suicide.

[@bokhans]

Great video as always! 👍 Thanks!

[@charliescott7764]

Great video as always. PS Enjoyed your article on Liverpool and Manchester "curiosities" in current edition of Backtrack

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

Cool, thanks! Ive not seen that one yet! Must means there's a cheque in the post somewhere.

[@maxz.6849]

Hey Anthony, for a video in the near future would you mind touching upon the importation of engines from other countries to be used on railways in Britain, or any of the other British islands?

[@PaulinesPastimes]

Good concise video. Such a cascade or poor decisions, it's a heart breaking story. Did this accident also contribute to the demise of the practice of locking people in the compartments? That always seemed like a potentially lethal idea to me. I recently rode in a 6 wheel wooden coach from the 1880s on the Victorian Goldfields Railway as part of the Heritage Week activities and it was the first time I had been in a coach with no door handles in the inside. You had to put the window down to use the handle on the outside but at least they weren't locked!

[@neiloflongbeck5705]

No, coach door are still locked. On the national network all slam door stock ended up being fitted with interlocking controlled by the guard. The doors are also locked on the NYMR services to Whitby whilst on the stretch betwee Whitby and Grosmont to prevent passengers without an NYMR ticket from boarding the train. These locks are fitted with emergency overrides. All BR and I think Big 4 coaches were fitted with internal door handles, but after an accident where a 10 year old boy opened a door on a moving train and fell out to his death these were removed from most coaching stock. The only the DMU fleegband the suburban EMU stock with limited opening in the stoplight door windows retained them. I've not travelled 9n a coach earliefbthan the 1930s so I can't comment on earlier coaches.

[@PaulinesPastimes]

@@neiloflongbeck5705 I can understand guard operated door locks with emergency release on modern carriages, every suburban and country train in Australia has them. My experience with Victorian (Australian state, not the era) country trains is that a staff member walks through the carriage and checks tickets. Suburban trains use a card and you touch on and off. Single journey tickets are unavailable. I was talking about voluminously dressed, 19th century people being locked in a small compartment of a wooden carriage with either gas or oil lighting and no way to open a door in an emergency even if you lower the window glass. That's my understanding of how it worked anyway.

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

Locking both compartment doors (off side and near side) in non-corridor compartment stock came to an end in 1842 with the Meudon Disaster in France. The Armagh case was unusual - the train was full, with even excursionists in the guardsvans and there was no room for any more people to board.

[@johnd8892]

@@PaulinesPastimes the Victorian Railways in my Australian state of Victoria did in the early years lock doors and then unlock them at stations even for suburban travel. Looks like the practice was gone by 1896 as the oldest film in Australia shows. Trains arriving at the 1896 Melbourne Cup : kzbin.info/www/bejne/d2K7n6iClLejpMk Would have to search further about where I read of the locking practice. Maybe VR to 62.

[@PaulinesPastimes]

@@johnd8892 The practice was mentioned in the video as happening at the time of the accident, that's what I was commenting on. I wasn't commenting on the practice in Victoria, merely replying to someone else's comment by comparing modern Victorian trains to the ones in the UK.

[@hawkerhellfire9152]

There does seem to be some conflicting info that rather than the engine being short of steam it was blowing off when it came to a halt, the stop just being because it was completely and utterly overloaded.

[@garryferrington811]

George Westinghouse invented the air brake (not vacuum brake) after seeing an engine run into the back of another train because the engineer simply couldn't stop. He made some good money out of it, too.

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

There were both Air and Vacuum Brakes manufactured by Westinghouse

[@felixtheswiss]

We have (Swiss Railways) still a few Westinghouse brakes in use.

[@mikebrown3772]

I wonder did the adoption of the simple continuous vacuum brake lead to a reduction in the number of brake carriages contributing to the inability to hold the detached portion?

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

It didn't as the hand brake was still considered to be the primary brake. So you would still have had, based on train length/weight one, or two or sometimes more guards' vehicles with hand brakes.

[@sebastianthomsen2225]

i did! 👍

[@matthewtymczyszyn8948]

Are you all right? I know it’s a sad story but you sound a bit choked up. Is Covid still going around?

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

Long Covid is something I don't think I'll ever throw off. It's slowly improving but it's been completely life-changing. And it f*cking sucks.

[@matthewtymczyszyn8948]

@@AnthonyDawsonHistory I was lucky. I shouldn’t say this online but I dropped out of college just before Covid. I’m not proud of it, but I see celebrities who had no choice but to be in public and look what happened. Anyway they found polio in London sewer so mind your back Andy.

[@wagrtrains]

280th

[@stevebarnes2]

So?

[@wagrtrains]

@@stevebarnes2 not again

[@stevebarnes2]

@@wagrtrains Always, it's important to call out this pathetic, worthless nonsense.