Morpeth 1984: 35 passengers and six crew members injured
RSSB’s Michael Woods presents a personal reflection on the overspeed accident at Morpeth.
On 24 June 1984, I was woken by a phone call from Control just after midnight. The controller said, ‘The Aberdeen Sleeper was approaching Morpeth when all the track circuits in the area went down – we think something serious has happened.’
So, as the on-call manager for the new combined Newcastle area of British Rail’s Eastern Region, I threw some clothes on top of my night gear, jumped into the office car and haired off north up the A1 from Gosforth.
I must admit I drove so fast that I rather frightened myself. But I had to keep going. Looking back to that day, I need to add some context. The regional reorganisation had come into effect at 00.01. The divisional level of management had been abolished and our Divisional Manager, John Thomson, who actually lived in Morpeth, had retired.
I was the acting Area Operations Manager, reporting to Dick Taylor, who lived many miles to the west in the shadow of Hadrian’s Wall. I was not expected to stay in my new post as, at 33 years old, there were many more displaced senior people who would be competing for it.
As I pulled into Morpeth, it felt like the car was driving over rocks. It was ballast that had been scattered over a wide area. I reached the station and was directed southwards towards the notorious Morpeth Curve, which had been the scene of an accident in 1969 (see Right Track 35), and would be again in the 90s.
The sleeper train had failed to negotiate the curve and was splayed out across both tracks. Some of the coaches had wrapped themselves around a bungalow on the downside, whose occupants were fortunately away on holiday. The Class 47 was on its side.
A piece of rail had gone right through a house on the Up side and into the next street. All the bogies with their wheels had torn off and gone left, reducing the energy as the train went to the right. Nobody was killed, but 29 passengers and six crew members were injured.
My first job was to check that the remains of the train had been protected and that people were being rescued. I did that and breathed a big sigh of relief. I donned my Mishap Controller hi-viz vest and saw that all the emergency services were on site.
I checked with Control that they were already making arrangements to get conductors out from my old area, so trains could bypass Morpeth and travel via Bedlington South (I had been Area Operations Manager Blyth three jobs previously). Then we got down to the serious twin activities of recovery and investigation.
All these activities have to be managed in parallel and you need to keep a clear mind with three or four decision trees running in parallel. At the same time, there was a constant stream of queries, suggestions, new pieces of information, and, yes, some complaints. At one stage, a passenger who was being lifted out of the train shouted that he was going to sue us all for every penny we had.
At an early stage of proceedings, I chaired an ad hoc meeting of all the emergency services and the railway engineers who had started to arrive. Knowing the locality quite well from my much slower Blyth and Tyne footplate rides, I suggested that the sleeper must have been ‘doing 90 mph round the curve’. When Derby research published their report some months later, they concluded that it had been 89 mph, so it was a reasonable guess.
Later, I was being interviewed by the northern reporters of the national dailies when my new big chief, the legendary Colin McKeever, Chief Operations Manager of the Region, arrived. I asked the reporters to wait for a moment and asked him, privately, if he wanted to take over. He said something like ‘no, you’re doing fine’, and I carried on.
The fact that some years before I had been Divisional PRO had some bearing and there clearly was an element of trust between us. Later on that morning, I was interviewed by BBC TV, and towards the end of the session their film ran out (yes, that’s how they did things in those days). While they reloaded, a crane from Haymarket in Edinburgh arrived in the background so we had to do it all over again.
I’m not going to repeat here what the enquiry concluded, but the full report can be found via the details in the box below. However, I did take an active part in the later enquiry, which convinced me of the skills and patience of the last generation of the old-style of ex Royal Engineers such as Lt Col Townsend Rose.
Two major and two personal outcomes remain important to me. On the personal level, the train driver was found not guilty of negligence even though he admitted drinking alcohol after signing on. His defence cited a medical condition, so he was not convicted.
In my case, the way the recovery was handled over the three days on site impressed my managers, and I was confirmed in my position soon afterwards and then promoted very quickly. This took me to the Southern Region at Dartford. My later promotions – to ORR and eventually to RSSB’s predecessor organisation Railway Safety – were clearly influenced by this, too.
Both this event and the buffer stop collision at Cannon Street (see Right Track 47) contributed to the legislation on drugs and alcohol that now apply to the industry. However, the enquiry report did note and sympathise with the fact that British Rail at the time did not want to take powers to be able to test its staff for alcohol.
And the issue of overspeeding, whatever its precursors, continues to be a significant part of the work that I and colleagues in Network Rail, ORR, RAIB, RSSB, and the train operators are currently engaged with. Overspeeding rarely has major consequences these days compared to, say, signals passed at danger, but when coupled with buffer stop collisions, it does include a significant element of the industry’s risk profile. As accidents in France, Japan, and Spain have shown, overspeeding can cause a great deal of harm to passengers and staff.
Search Morpeth on the Railways Archive to read the report on the accident.
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