LNER Route: Leicester to Marylebone

Rugby Central Station: gcrgen319

Ex-LNER B1 4-6-0 No 61137 stands at Rugby Central with the breakdown train on Sunday 5th March 1961. Based at 15E Leicester Great Central shed,. No 61137 was built in March 1947 by the North British Locomotive Company of Glasgow and remained in service until May 1962 when it was withdrawn from 9G Gorton shed to be scrapped by Darlington works. The breakdown train had been employed at the site of the accident which had occurred the previous month at Newton, just north of Rugby. The summary report of the accident stated. 'The 1:50 am express freight train from Woodford to Mottram, travelling on the Down line, became divided after the derailment of a wagon, and the rear portion came to rest with the leading wagon blocking the Up line. A few minutes later at about 2:48 am, the 10:23 pm express passenger train from York to Swindon on the Up line collided at speed with the derailed wagon. The engine and tender (of the passenger train) turned on their sides and the tender turned end for end, becoming separated from the engine. The coupling came away between the tender and the leading vehicle which overran the tender diagonally to the left before it came to rest in the field adjoining the railway. Many of the other vehicles were derailed but there was no telescoping and no destruction of bodywork except to the first vehicle, which fortunately was not a passenger coach. Two of the eighteen passengers in the train were slightly injured. Regretfully, the driver ALL Jones was trapped on the engine and received fatal injuries; his fireman and two other members of the train crew, and the guard of the freight train, suffered from shock'.

The full report is available here courtesy of the Railway Archive www.railwaysarchive.co.uk

Tony Newman

back