Memoirs of a Railway Volunteer - Part 10

THe Chronicles of Rowsley Sidings II : The Day The Duke Fell Off.

You may say it is a little morbid to write about a railway accident. However anyone can run a railway when things are going well. It is when railway operations go wrong that you learn about the fundamentals of things.

It was about 5pm on a Saturday in June 1998. Vince Kay and myself were pottering about in the engineers sidings at Rowsley. We were just about to finish and I had a date which I was very much looking forward to. Then there was the most tremendous crash from the direction of the railway, like a skip load of scrap being turned upside down, which is what I thought it was at first. The Firth Rixons foundry is opposite our site.

“Rixons are working late today”, I said.

“Rixons be b******d, The Duke’s off”- and she was. We went down for a closer look, and there was The Duke, sat on the ballast on the South crossover. Somehow she had split the points leading off the loop. The leading drivers had gone to the left, and the drop in the front allowed the rear drivers to go to the right, so only the centre pair were still on the rails.

The footplate crew were a bit shaken, but unhurt. In a situation like this, the duty manager takes possession of the train staff and all further movements have to be authorised by him. It was the last train of the day, with very few passengers, and lifts were arranged to get them back to their cars where necessary. My immediate task was to inspect the track, organise any repairs and report for further instructions.

A derailed steam locomotive stops being a piece of nostalgia and becomes an engine of destruction. The Duke weighs about 45 tons and all of this had been concentrated on the relatively sharp flanges of the driving wheels. These had bounced over and smashed everything in their path, especially the special cast iron chairs which held the switches, though the rails had not been damaged. Some of the timbers were a little chewed up, but not badly enough to require immediate replacement. I noticed that the wire leading from the ground frame to the signal was bar tight, which was unusual. Vince and I made a list, No2 stretcher, 3PLB, 4PLB, 4PRB and so forth. Fortunately the derailment had taken place right next to the permanent way department stores, where such things were laid out ready for use. I left Vince to start gathering the tackle and went to the station.

By this time the passengers had been got away and the mechanical engineering department were preparing to bring up heavy lifting jacks. Senior management were on the way. All railways run on a military style discipline, and at times like this you need it. There was a brief, crisp conference on possible methods of re-railing, one or two people were calling for the 38 ton steam crane to be lit up. It would have been quite capable of doing the job, one end at a time, but would require several hours to get up steam. My view was that the safest and fastest method would be to jack up the bunker end, get packing and re-railing ramps underneath and pull it back on the way it fell off. As we actually had a set of ramps in the P.W. stores next door, this carried the day. We would need the light diesel crane to lift the ramps, and to lend its chain, and the big diesel electric Pen-Y-Gent to do the pulling, and both would have to be brought up from Darley Dale.

I rang the young lady concerned to say that I would be late, very late, and went back to join Vince. We set about jacking up the rails, unscrewing the broken chairs, and putting in the replacements, which takes quite a bit of wangling in the narrow gap between the switch and stock rails.

The actual cause of the accident was easy to work out. Railway signalling equipment leaves clues behind when it goes wrong. The points were operated by a ground frame not far away. The drill should have been that the fireman pulled the turnout lever. When the blades were fully over, the slot in a detector bar would be in just the right place to release the drive bar to the ground signal. The when the fireman pulled the signal lever, the signal would clear and authorise the driver to move forwards. What actually happened was that the point blades didn’t quite pull over. The fireman pulled hard on the signal lever when it wouldn’t go over at first, and on a hot day there was enough stretch in the wire, and the cranks moved a little in the ground, so he managed to get the lever across, hence the bar tight wire. Then the fireman waved to the driver, who moved on that and not on the signal, which had not moved. Normally you might get away with this without a problem; this time the gap was wide enough for the wheels to split the points and they did.

You will note the basic principle of railway safety that two people have to make a mistake at the same time before an accident can happen. There but for the grace of God go any of us, I can think of plenty of errors of my own. Recriminations would have been pointless. It is very easy never to make a mistake on a preserved railway. All you have to do is stay home and watch television.

Time seems to sprint rapidly on jobs like this. It probably took a couple of hours to fix the track and bring up the heavy locomotive jacks. The light jacks which Vince and I had used to repair the track would have been no use for this work. The simple fact is that locomotives are so massive that anything strong enough to deal with them is painfully heavy to carry. The first move was to lift the bunker end and get packing underneath. As I recall, and it was several years ago, the rear wheels had to be lifted up high enough to go over the switch rail, and we couldn’t get the ramps into the gap between the switch and stock rails.

As the back end went up, the front end dug down. We were operating a 45 ton seesaw which threatened to twist sideways, so crawling into the confined space underneath was not pleasant. The bottom of a steam locomotive is generally covered in oil and filth and dribbles water and hot ash at random. A light rain began to fall. At times like this you notice the people who stay to the end. Somehow myself, Vince, the fireman and a young lad called Alistair Gregory managed to bring up a couple of crossing timbers and wedge them under the rear wheels. Locomotive packings are often improvised in an emergency but must be meticulously square and level. We needed something to carry the wheel across from the timber and over the rail. Fishplates would probably do the job, but would be bent into scrap in the process. I told Vince to organise some Great Western fishplates which were in a heap nearby, and he grinned horribly in the dusk. Vince, a lifelong socialist, regarded the GWR as the Tory party on rails, and was only too pleased to see a Swindon product get mangled. From my point of view the GWR plates were non standard and the least valuable to lose. We packed and re-packed until we were satisfied and by that time it was well and truly dark. Alistair brought his car round and shone the headlights on the job.

For the rear wheels we used the ramps, which were lifted over by the light diesel P.W. crane which had now arrived and was driven by Mick Thomas. They are very heavy cast steel shoehorns, strong enough to take the shock weight of re-railing a locomotive, and while they could just about have been carried over by hand, there was no point in suffering, and we needed the long chain off the crane for towing. Again we crawled under and placed the ramps, and the packings to keep them stable.

This is where things came to the crunch, quite literally I suppose. By now Pen-Y-Gent had arrived, with our Operating Director, Gordon Bennett on the footplate. The coaches had to be cleared away to Darley Dale so that we could run her round the loop and bring her up to the rear of the Duke, where we joined the two with the big chain. Gordon and I had a quick conference and settled our moves in advance. Gordon is a professional railwayman and had done this sort of thing many times. I had done it a few times and had read about it, which is not quite the same thing. We agreed to bring her back gently on to the rails one wheel at a time, on my hand signals only. This clear and confirmed understanding was essential; there were quite a lot of people about who would become instant experts and say all sorts of things when the action happened. I would keep an eye on Vince, the fireman and Alistair, and any of them could give the order to stop. Only I could give the order to start.

Pen-Y-Gent weighs about 140 tons and has 2000 horsepower, so it wasn’t much of a contest. The Duke rode inch by inch up out of the ballast and up the ramp, which held steady. I raised my hand and Gordon stopped, amid cries of Yes! No! Keep going! from the gallery. Vince and I inspected the packings to make sure they hadn’t moved and I motioned Gordon to continue. The rear wheels continued to roll over the fishplates and the engine settled back down on the rails with an enormous thump.

It still took us a long time after that to put the railway to bed. The packings and the ramps had to be cleared away, including the bent GWR fishplates. Then the Duke, the big diesel and the crane had to be taken back to Darley Dale to clear the section ready for the morning. I worked the gates at Church Lane and got some pretty rude comments from the neighbours at that time of night. Alistair saw the cavalcade through the platforms safely, and that was that. Gordon would handle the enquiry and the reports in due course. A quick inspection of the Duke in the morning, tamp down the signal cranks, and we would operate as if nothing had happened. It was just gone midnight. I was soaked, tired and devilish hungry.

That left the remains of my date. I had instructions to come in when it was all over, but I must admit I was nervous as I drove to her flat. We had been planning a romantic evening out, and that had been utterly ruined. There were a number of alternative outcomes, and not all of them pleasant.

On arrival I took my boots off and paddled up the stairs in my filthy clothes; the flat was warm and bright and clean as a new pin.

“You poor thing, you look shattered. Have a shower, there’s a shepherds pie in the oven. I thought you might need a drink so I’ve been to the off licence for a malt whisky”

Suddenly all the alternatives were quite resolved, and there was only one Question left. I had to ask it or burst.

“Will you marry me?”

“Go down on one knee and do it properly”. Well, I did though it put an oil stain on the floor.

“Of course I will”- and that was that, we were married the following May. As I said before, it is when it all goes wrong that you get down to the fundamentals of things.

Tim

My friend and comrade, Vince Kay, died during treatment for cancer, aged 39 in 2004.

 

Gripping entertainment, Tim. It makes me wish I had taken notes of all that happened to me over 37 years on the Severn Valley. Many episodes struck identical chords. I have been there, apart from the wheeler-dealing, I was a shoveller and crane driver. That was so well -written, you must consider a book. You are clearly a born storyteller.

All the best,

jtx