A baby and a boy were among eight people to lose their lives in ‘distressing’ railway accident in 1880 near Lancaster

The train involved in the accident was an express train travelling from Leeds to Morecambe. It consisted of a tender, locomotive, two break vans and seven carriages.

Passing safely through Wennington station, around forty yards down the line it arrived at the junction of the Lancaster and Carnforth lines. It was here that the incident occurred.

The train left the rails and ploughed the tracks for fifty yards.

Reaching the bridge that spans the road from Wennington to Wray, the luggage van next to the engine and tender collided with the arch of the bridge and shattered into fragments.

The composite and third-class carriages swerved to the left and smashed into the buttress of the bridge, completely telescoping one carriage into the other.

The first-class compartment of the next carriage was also shattered, the carriage thrown on its side.

The scene which followed was one of ‘confusion and dismay’, the atmosphere punctuated with the ‘heartrending cries of the wounded and the shrieks of women and children’.

Some passengers from the rear of the train were unhurt but ‘completely stupefied’ by the fate of their ‘fellow travellers’.

Those able to do so set to work helping the injured. Several passengers were taken to the Foster’s Arms Hotel in Wennington. Others were laid out on the bank besides the track.

The scale of the tragedy was immediately evident. Those losing their lives included a three-month-old baby and a boy named Mitchell, who died in the arms of his rescuer, Mr. W. Cumberland, a

builder from Bentham.

A young man, aged around nineteen, was taken to the Foster’s Arms where he died shortly afterwards.

Deceased passengers were also taken to the hotel. ‘It was a sickening, sad and mournful sight’, noted the Lancaster Gazette, to see ‘standing before the hotel on the green’ four victims covered with white linen sheets. Inside, survivors ‘stood mute’.

Eight people lost their lives in the accident; twenty-three were injured.

A party of haymakers had a narrow escape. Minutes before the accident Mr. Miller of Wray and three other men had been eating their dinner on the spot where the carriages smashed into the bridge buttress.

Dr Bradley Bentham and his assistant Mr Carr provided the first medical assistance on scene. News of the accident arrived at Lancaster around 2.30pm.

The town was quick to respond. Within fifteen minutes several doctors and the house surgeon of Lancaster Infirmary were at Ayre station, ‘ready in waiting with suitable appliances’.

Unfortunately, their departure was delayed due to the system used on certain lines to limit access to a single train.

The line from Lancaster to Hornby was a single line and was worked using the ‘staff system’. The staff was an instrument that was passed to the train driver who had to return it before it could be issued to the next train, thus ensuring only one train could enter a given section of line.

The staff was at Hornby at the time of the collision, awaiting the train involved in the accident which would clear it to access the Lancaster line.

A bogie operated by two men was put to use to deliver the staff to the rescue train.

Delayed by an hour, the train eventually left Lancaster at 3.45pm.

Fourteen minutes later it delivered the medics, a number of workmen together with Mr Thistlewaite, the stationmaster, Mr Melrose of the engineering department, and the Hornby stationmaster to the scene of the accident.

With ‘remarkable promptitude’, the ‘poor sufferers’ were treated for their injuries.

Makeshift litters were made using cushions and boards salvaged from the wrecked train. Local residents kindly provided pillows and beds.

By 5pm, several injured passengers were taken away in the care of doctors.

Seven were taken to Lancaster Infirmary. Those escaping with only cuts and bruises boarded the train and proceeded on to Lancaster and Morecambe.

Attention quickly turned to clearing the line for reopening. A large gang of railway labourers arrived with the breakdown van at 4.30pm from Skipton and set to work.

Such was the undertaking, the bodies of two girls and a boy that lay on the banks could not be carried to the Foster’s Arms until 6pm.

An official inquiry to establish the cause of the accident was immediately set in place.

The summing up stated that the train had left Leeds twenty minutes late but had reduced this delay to twelve minutes by the time it reached Bentham.

It was travelling at around 30mph at the time of the accident.

The train left the line, causing the carriages to collide with the bridge. The moment this happened was described by a passenger from Hellifield, travelling in the third carriage.

The witness explained how the train ‘proceeded all right until it had passed Wennington station when [it] gave a sudden lurch’ causing them to be ‘thrown on the opposite side of the carriage’ which ‘turned over on to its side’.

Significantly, the crossing had been re-laid twenty hours previously and was judged to have been incorrectly reset.

Tightness in the gauge (width) of the rails was also noted. In his report for the Board of Trade, Colonel Yolland concluded that these faults caused the engine to ‘mount and strike the fixed point and fracture the box crossing, and thus permitted the accident to occur.’

Insufficient braking capacity was also highlighted. The train had no continuous brake; it relied only on the tender and the brake van.

Whereas the train was timed to run at 37mph between Bentham and Hornby, clocked times show it averaged 32mph.

However, considering the inadequate braking, the speed of the train contributed to the severity of the accident.

Following the inquiry, it was a recommended that a speed limit be imposed on the curve.

Sadly the ruling came too late for those who lost their lives on that Wednesday afternoon in August 1880.