Portal:Trains/Selected article/Week 7, 2015

The Harrow and Wealdstone rail crash was (and as of December 2014 remains) the worst peacetime rail crash in the United Kingdom: a multiple train collision at Harrow and Wealdstone station, in London, on the morning of 8 October 1952. An express train from Perth crashed at speed into the rear of a local passenger train stopped at the station's platform no 4. The wreckage blocked adjacent lines, and within a few seconds a "double-headed" express train, travelling north at 60 miles per hour (100 kph), crashed into the Perth train's locomotive. There were 112 fatalities and 88 people were detained in hospital. The slow lines were reopened early the following morning, but it was several days before traffic was allowed on all lines. A subsequent Ministry of Transport report on the crash found that the driver of the Perth train had passed a caution signal and two danger signals before colliding with the local train. The accident accelerated the introduction of Automatic Warning System – by the time the report had been published British Railways had agreed to a five-year plan to install the system that warned drivers that they had passed an adverse signal.