Three decades since Staffordshire rail crash caused by train fault left one dead, 20 injured and a gas leak in the air

It happened around 11.08pm when a southbound Transrail freight train travelling from Mossend in North Lanarkshire to Willesden in north London derailed after an axle on one of its wagons fractured.

The freight train was carrying tanker wagons filled with liquid carbon dioxide when the axle failure occurred, with the broken axle causing the wagon and several others to derail and foul the adjacent line. 

The collision then occurred immediately afterwards as a travelling Post Office train approached on the neighbouring track at speed and collided with the wreckage.

The Travelling Post Office train was hauled by British Rail Class 86 locomotive number 86239 and when it struck the derailed wagons, it was thrown off the track and spun up the embankment before coming to rest against the end wall of a nearby house. 

The locomotive and the front vehicles of the mail train were completely derailed in the crash and one Royal Mail employee working aboard the Travelling Post Office service was killed in the collision, while around twenty other people were injured, including the driver of the mail train. 

It was a crash which caused significant damage to both trains and the surrounding area, with wreckage scattered everywhere, and emergency services teams were quickly dispatched to the scene, arriving within four minutes and working to assist those who were injured.

This included nine members of staff in the third carriage, with one suffering a fractured skull and another a fractured shoulder, while the remaining workers in coaches five and six escaped with less serious injuries, as the vehicles remained upright and intact. 

First responders were met by a dense white cloud of carbon dioxide leaking from the pierced wagons, but the injured were quickly located and moved to waiting ambulances by fire fighters wearing breathing apparatus. 

The Fire Service was given confirmation that the gas was carbon dioxide by the driver of the freight train, and by the Train List that recorded the wagons carrying dangerous goods and their position in the train.

Although not a toxic substance and non-flammable, the gas was sufficiently concentrated to induce unconsciousness in one bystander through oxygen deprivation, before that evening’s light wind was able to slowly disperse it. 

More than 50 homes were evacuated until the remaining carbon dioxide could be drained from all wagons conveying the gas. 

A full inquiry to establish the cause of the fatal crash was rapidly launched by the Health & Safety Executive (HSE), and inspectors from HM Railway Inspectorate focused on a defective axle found beneath the ninth wagon, owned by CAIB UK and leased to MG Gas Products. 

Published on November 4, 1996, the HSE report confirmed that the track in the Rickerscote area had indeed been in good condition and that the broken axle had induced the crash, stemming from a rare type of fracture in the broken axle’s mid-span.