Worcester Tunnel Junction 1976 (Re-Upload)

On the 3rd of January 1976, a locomotive collided with a parcel train before the Rainbow Hill Tunnel.
Sources
Railways Archive
www.railwaysar...
www.railwaysar...
Railway Codes. org .uk
www.railwaycode...
BR Database
www.brdatabase...
www.brdatabase...
Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton railway map image: By Afterbrunel - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikime...
Shrub Hill station image By Ben Brooksbank, CC BY-SA 2.0, commons.wikime...
Title Image Sources: itsallabouttheclag
• 1015 rainbow hill tunnel
Music:
Long Note One - Kevin MacLeod - (incompetech.com) - Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 - creativecommons....

[@DayOfDisaster]

The video was re-uploaded after some edits were required.

[@bertspeggly4428]

Pity the editing didn't include correction of the misspelling of "Lest We Forget".

[@fircombehallrailwayoogauge1430]

@@bertspeggly4428spelling is not the most important thing in this context.

[@patrickyorke3028]

Great presentation. Thanks.

[@itsallabouttheclag]

Very informative and interesting…. Nice still image of the Tunnel mouth featuring the signals, looks identical to mine .

[@robertbate5790]

A tragedy I remember quite well. There was speculation at the time that the driver had been blinded by sun light. I had just become platform staff at my local staion on the old Snow Hill to Leamington line. And I had read "Red for Danger". All it takes is a moments inattention. RIP 🙏🙏

[@hamster-wh3ws]

45mph sounds a bit fast when you can't be certain another train has cleared the block. Thanks for the video :)

[@christopherhulse8385]

Certainly not proceeding with caution at that speed.

[@sirrliv]

Glad to see this episode back up again. I must admit, at the mention of time interval working at the time of this incident, my immediate reaction was shock and consternation. I understand the difficult circumstances at the time, with both block instruments and telephone lines downed by the storm. But at the same time having to resort to such an archaic and provably dangerous method of train operation seems bordering on insanity. Surely no signalman in his right mind would have suggested such a thing unless there was no other option. Likewise, I find it shocking that the crew of the Class 52 would consider 45mph to be a "cautious" speed. Then again, the same engine, presumably with the same crew, had already taken a goods train through the area earlier that day. So it's not impossible that complacency combined with a bit of fatigue may have led to a lapse of concentration and focus plus a bit of impatience to get the job done.

[@chriswade7470]

Time interval working was still available as an option in 1990 when I did my Guards training.

[@rogercook6360]

A most interesting and well produced account of this accident and video.

[@LostsTVandRadio]

Goodness - I don't remember this. Very well explained.

[@David19553]

Extremely informative. Live long and prosper.🖖😇 My condolences to those who perished.🙏

[@Llamberg.Railway]

Excellent video, but I notice 31241 is mentioned at the start but 31242 is referenced at the end. During my long career I had worked on 31241

[@DayOfDisaster]

Yes, the loco pictured at the end is 31241.

[@fhwolthuis]

Interesting video, thank you!

[@AndrewBush-d2j]

My late father worked on the railways he told me a few stories regarding train disasters he was a signal man

[@dodgydruid]

So was my father although he didn't ever talk about accidents coming from being a box boy at North Kent East signalbox the night the train came down at St Johns and he was one of the first staff to arrive at the scene, changed him forever causing him mental distress over many years. Worse was yet to come as he had been working on relief at Hither Green but was off duty when the Hasting's toppled over there, he was visiting the hospital with me a few weeks old with me mum and the police carted him off to some place and it brought all of St Johns back even though it was a platelayers cause two disasters on his watch was hard and he had a serious breakdown. He was put on "gardening" duty of relief work along the lines based at Hoo or Cuxton and spent half the time decommissioning the old Chatham line station boxes like Sole St, then he passed out for Orpington A and B working the line up and down from there relief and he seemed back on track. Left BR with most passes out on BR books and spent his retirement working for Swanage Railway known as "rule book Keith" or "fag and tea Keith" as he was never ever seen without a giant mug of copper brown tea or a rollie. He wrote the whole thing for connecting to Wareham as Network Rail were happy to work with him over that.

[@David19553]

Live long and prosper.🖖😇

[@beeble2003]

BTW, GUV is "general utility van", not "goods".

[@BlackcloudRailways]

It's lest we forget, not least.

[@simonf8902]

45 mph. Cautious???

[@dodgydruid]

It all came down to the mother up of assumptions on the two drivers, the signalman and lax attitudes of guards esp that on the following train as a guard is supposed to keep a wary eye for work parties, warning boards and kids on the line near tunnels. I actually remember my signalman father issued with one of the pastel books that was an abridged version of the incident inquiry, my uncle a 33 driver at Hoo also received a copy of this and told by line managers both to read and re-read or else. So the powers that be were not going to let this one slide and no doubt sent rockets down the branches of staff on the lines aplenty. It also highlighted what can and will happen if you work outside an absolute block system, both drivers should have been given a ticket by the signalman allowing to precede, ticket should have been on the desk as a reminder but 1970's BR was such a different place then, safety was an elf that lived in a mythical far off land and bad practice crept in always.

[@pbsteamatspeed7683]

Probably the parcels van was filthy, and being dark blue would have blended into the hillside and tunnel ahead. Add to that the possibilty of low sunlight blinding the driver. If he thought the signal pulled off was for him he might have been accelerating. Its also downhill so speed on the western would have picked up very quickly.

[@lauriemulrine1882]

Locos are referred to as 31241 and 1055 "Western Advocate" but at the end there is a reference to 31242!

[@be5952]

OOOooops.... _'background'_ music turned up rather too loudly. Should be _actually_ background, rather than in theory only. Thanks

[@PJay-wy5fx]

In the past fee weeks, YT has been suggesting many great channels that are new to me. Yours I'm watching for the first time today. Unfortunately, many channels (about half I estimate) have the music volume so loud compared to the voice over that it becomes very difficult to follow. Esp when the notes are high pitched, like in this video. I'll make sure to check more of your content to see if that is more accessible to me. I thought it was worth mentioning as I feel bad I need to leave this video and move on not even two minutes into it. The auto generated cc is quite horrific and delayed, so that did not really help me out I'm sad to say. I'm not a content creator and maybe there is a reason why music levels are so high. If you can shed some light on that, I'd appreciate it as it's always nice to learn something new. For disabled people however, (this goes for a number of different disabilities), it makes the content inaccessible unfortunately.

[@Guitar6ty]

Excellent presentation ruined by back ground noise masquerading as music.

[@smitajky]

Any form of communication failure is serious. Yet it is so much worse today with centralised train control. There is no signalman to talk to drivers and give them clear instructions. Just today there was an announcement of two companies charged with a collision where two people were killed. The signals had failed and the main line had a speed of 120km/hr. The loop had a speed of 20 km/hr. A passenger train was deviated into the loop but with no signals or other definite warning. In the old days the train would have been slowed and a pilotman would have been carried to authorise going past the failed signal. But safeworking is a cost and was not done any more.

[@nedseagoon5101]

What rubbish! We’ve never had better communication with signallers and other control staff. We have GSMR radios fitted that have instant comms wherever we are. Pilot men have only ever been used to over see a major failure of signalling over a wide area or pre planned engineering works. Driver pass red signals at danger under authority every day of the week for various reasons.

[@docdaneeka3424]

Sounds awfully like you're talking about the Wallan derailment in Australia? You can read the full report on the ATSB website, the circumstances are far more complex and subtle than you make them out to be. PS there was a pilot on the Wallan train, he was one of the two killed. Modern rail systems are miles ahead of 'the old days'.

[@richardperry5538]

Proceed at caution....45mph isn't proceeding at caution, very sad losses.

[@am74343]

That moment when "Plan B" isn't followed!

[@geoffreylee5199]

UK trains don’t have bright lights on their fronts, nor their rears. Why?

[@mjt8199]

They didn't at the time. Headlights didn't (and still don't) really do much other than make the loco/train more visible. It was probably felt that marker/headcode lights on locos/units at the time did that job sufficiently.

[@THEFORBIDDENMAN-lk7of]

WHAT PASSING SIGNAL AT DANGER 45MPH - 💩💩💩

[@chicagogyrl4846]

Holy Crap Can you talk a little faster??!!

[@trevormoat6919]

Great to learn from videos like this, I only have one problem, the "Lest we Forget" is at every Military Cemetery as is really meant that we do not forget those who died fighting or in defence of our Freedom not for anything else, I agree that we should not forget, however to put the two deceased men in the same category as, well lets say Railway men on the southern region in say, the Dover area in ww11 who died during bombing raids as they kept working is not honouring to those men, as the inquiry stated, the driver and guard drove without caution (paraphrased), they apparently were the cause of the crash, sorry but to use an Epitaph meant for the Heroic dead, lowers the standing of those who it is meant for.

[@guelphjunction6633]

Actually “Lest we Forget” is a phrase from the poem Recessional, written by Rudyard Kipling. He quoted Deuteronomy 6:12 where it says lest we forget the Lord. Sadly it has been misapplied to dead warriors etc.

[@willscottytv]

What's with the ridiculous use of every single initial of someone's first names?

[@troo_story]

So I had to stop and rewind after the first 10 seconds to work out what a Raawe was that was mentioned twice. 🙄

[@HailAnts]

As an American, I would comment that there's a lot of railroad jargon specific to Britain in this. Makes it more difficult to understand.

[@SteveW139]

You make a valid point; KZbin is international in scope. However, it is not unreasonable for a content creator to aim at a particular audience and target the content accordingly. There’s no difference between a British creator targeting a British audience and an American one using American English and expressions not understood by non-American speakers of English.