3-071-226 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Fatal Railway Accident at Canonbury: bringing the wounded out of the tunnel, 1881. '...the loss of five lives...by a compound railway collision in the Canonbury tunnel...a train leaving Finsbury Park ran into the train in front, but the collision was not a very severe one, and the first train soon moved on. The second train, however, still remained in the tunnel, and presently [another] train...dashed into it. These collisions put out the gas in the carriages...Many people...attempted to leave the carriages, regardless of the danger from traffic on the down line. In a minute or two, another much more terrific crash came from a fourth train...Not only were the wounded groaning and shrieking from beneath the wreck of the carriages, but the uninjured...passengers were groping in...the darkness and...scalding steam. Some, in their blind leaps from the carriages, were pitched head long on the line; others, before attempting escape from the wreck, had first to disentangle themselves front the dead and the dying...It appeared that the two Companies [the North London Railway and the Great Northern line] have different codes of signals, and that the signal to "block" the line, or stop the trains from entering the tunnel, was misunderstood'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.