Staplehurst rail crash

The railway accident at Staplehurst, Kent, was a bridge collapse under a moving train during construction work on the South Eastern Main Line at the bridge over the Beult, a tributary of the Medway, on 9 June 1865. In this accident 10 travelers died, 40 were injured. A fellow passenger on the train was the writer Charles Dickens.

Conditions

As Tidal Boat Trains were called, trains that established the connection between London and boat links to the continental mainland, the wrong tide dependent, because the port of Folkestone was not yet tide free to run. This necessitated a daily changing schedule. At the accident took place on the track at Staplehurst construction.

Accident

For the work was a foreman remove rails on the bridge over the Beult. He calculated erroneously with a later arrival of the train, so that the track system was not restored in time, as the " Tidal " Folkestone approached, was occupied with travelers a boat service from France. The prescribed marshals, the trains should signal the danger was not as prescribed, 1,000 m, but only 500 meters placed in front of the construction site. Next would properly detonators must be placed on the track - was also missing this. The train was so not brake in time and ran over the rail gap with about 50 km / h The locomotive still slipped on the wooden beams, on which the rails on the bridge would have to be mounted, but the shock of the derailed train caused on the bridge, broke the cast iron bridge girders. Locomotive, tender and with a baggage car remained on the track, the following coaches remained after his crash relatively unscathed at the bridge hanging ( in it traveled Charles Dickens ), the following vehicles crashed, only the last three were back on the track stand.

Examination result

In addition to the security failures at the site and the construction of the bridge has been objected that showed no additional safeguards against falls from vehicles.

Literary precipitation

The writer Charles Dickens came back from Paris and was the first passenger coaches ( on the picture is the one who depends on the half- bridge down ). He was physically unhurt, but was emotionally traumatized by the accident. He has since had major problems when he had to travel by train, trying to avoid that if possible. He described the accident in the afterword to the novel, Our Mutual Friend, where he had worked during the trip. After dying and injured travelers provided assistance, he climbed once more back in the car to save the manuscript of the book. Shortly after the accident, he wrote the short story The Signal -Man, a ghost story about a railway accident. This draws but rather from the events of the railway accident in Clayton Tunnel, which occurred in 1861.

Further, the railway accident at Staplehurst in the plot of Ronald Frederick Delderfields " God is an Englishman " ( Swann Saga ) has been processed and the accident is the starting point of the novel Drood from 2009 by Dan Simmons.