3-053-421 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Scene of the railway accident at Wigan, 1873. View showing '...the position into which the carriages were thrown when they parted from the train, with the havoc that was wrought by the violent concussion...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 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...One of the iron pillars on the roof, which stood midway on the platform, was struck down by the extraordinary leap of one of the carriages against it, and by three or four of the carriages running right on the top of each other...soon a numerous party of assistants, including the police, were endeavouring to extricate the sufferers from the broken carriages. Some were rending the air with shrieks and moans'. From "Illustrated London News", 1873.