3-082-017 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Railway Disaster at Chelford, near Crewe: some of the wrecked carriages, 1895. Scene of a '...grievous accident by which fourteen persons were killed and more than twice as many were badly hurt...[at the] junction of the London and North-Western Railway main lines for Manchester and Liverpool...some goods traffic or trucks...had been left empty on a siding, to be attached to an expected down train. There was an engine removing these trucks...from the siding to the main down line. While this was being done there was a violent north-west gale of wind. It may have set a truck in motion, which slipped off the siding, apparently skipped over the switches...and got unobserved on the up line, perhaps a few moments only before the up express train was to pass - or perhaps at the very moment...there was no time to give the alarm or to clear the line...On came the train, at the rate of a mile in a minute, and the locomotive engine in front, striking the truck, fairly jumped over it, falling overturned beyond. The...carriages...in the middle part of the train, were smashed...In one compartment a lady had both legs cut off, and died soon after being got out...Thirteen corpses, terribly mutilated, were found amidst the wreck'. From "Illustrated London News", 1895.