Norwood Junction rail accident
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The Norwood Junction railway crash occurred on 1 May 1891, when a cast iron under-bridge fractured under an express train from Brighton to London in southern England.
The locomotive crossed the bridge safely with most of its carriages intact, but the brake van fell into the gap on the bridge. There were no casualties, apart from a dislocated ankle. However, the train was for first class business men only, and raised a furore in Parliament at a time when the wealthy saw themselves as above the rest. The accident drew attention to the weakness of cast iron structures in under-bridges, especially as many had been installed in the 1830s and 1840s when locomotives were much lighter.
[edit] Causes
The single girder that cracked was seriously flawed with a very large blowhole in the flange and web. The subsequent investigation by General Hutchinson (who had been involved in the Tay Rail Bridge inquiry) recommended that all such bridges on the Southern network be inspected. The task fell to Sir John Fowler, who recommended that many be replaced by wrought iron structures.
The accident led the Board of Trade to issue a circular requesting details of all cast iron under-bridges on the UK network. There were thousands of such bridges, and most were gradually replaced so as to reassure the travelling public. However, there are still many thousands of cast iron beam over-bridges remaining today, many with very low weight restrictions.
Ironically, a very similar cast iron girder had failed on the same bridge in 1877, when a locomotive over-ran the track on a disused siding. The driver was injured as the locomotive fell into the roadway below, but the warning about the poor design and strength of the girders went unheeded until the second failure in 1891. Another cast iron rail bridge however, fractured under a passing train at Inverythan in Scotland in 1882, and five passengers were killed, and many more injured. The Inverythan crash was yet another example of under-designed bridges on the national rail network.
[edit] References
- LTC Rolt, Red for Danger, Sutton Publishing (1998).
- Peter R. Lewis, Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay: Reinvestigating the Tay Bridge Disaster of 1879, Tempus, 2004, ISBN 0-7524-3160-9.
- Peter R Lewis, Disaster on the Dee: Robert Stephenson's Nemesis of 1847, Tempus Publishing (2007) ISBN 978 0 7524 4266 2
[edit] External links
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