3-053-420 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The railway accident at Wigan, 1873. '...view of the station-yard, the lines of rails, the paved platform, and adjacent buildings...A most terrible accident, causing the death of twelve passengers and serious hurts to many more, occurred on the London and North-Western Railway, at the Wigan junction station, to the tourists' night express train from London to Scotland...When...the train (more than fifteen minutes late), approached Wigan, the signals showed "All right."...The two engines (both of which were at the head) and seventeen or eighteen of the carriages passed the facing points in safety at the usual...[speed]. Owing to some cause as yet unexplained, the remaining six or seven carriages and a guard's van were jerked from the body of the train and the main line...and rushed up the siding...The other carriages sprang from the metals to the platform and fell over upon their sides...The shock was tremendous with which the carriages that parted from the train came against the station buildings...One corner of the wall from which springs the roof of the station was knocked out of plumb along several yards of its length'. From "Illustrated London News", 1873.