Stafford (UK) train crash 1996

[sheerluck]

Drivesafe's "highway to hazmat hell" thread just struck a chord with me while reading it, and though this story has only vague similarities, I thought I would tell it......

Just over 18 years ago, on the 8th March 1996, I'd not long gone to bed with my heavily pregnant wife, in our small 2 bedroom townhouse in the small town of Stafford, UK. It was our first house together, and as we weren't rich, the house location was not brilliant. In fact it was about 20m from the main railway line (there was 4 townhouses between us and the edge of the 5m deep embankment that the rail line was cut into).

Just after 11pm, the house was violently shaken, pictures jumped off the walls, furniture fell over, we could hear banging and crashing all around us.
"Earthquake!" was the first thought, but then the rational part of the brain took over, and the second thought was that perhaps a truck had hit the bridge over the railway line that was 30m from our front door.

I threw some clothes on, not wanting to scare the neighbours, and ran out the front door to be confronted with a very, very dense white fog. I could hear loud hissing, and some screams. I ran (with my neighbour) blindly towards the railway bridge, to find when we got there that the noises were behind us. On the railway line. We turned around just as a light breeze blew a hole in the "fog" to see an almighty mess on the train line. Two trains, a Royal Mail sorting train and a freight train had hit, slid up the embankment and hit the the end townhouse of our row.

Just as we got to try and climb the fence and the mangled wreckage, feeling really rather nauseous and short of breath the emergency services pulled up. They had gone into full disaster mode. There was dozens of fire engines, police cars and ambos in our little cul-de-sac, a big inflatable tent was being set up outside our house (which we later found out was a temporary morgue).

We were all then evacuated. The "fog" turned out to be several of the 13 46ton liquid carbon dioxide tankers had ruptured, and spewing clouds of CO2 everywhere. The biggest worry was that there was a 46tonne tanker of aviation fuel on the same train (though later on, it was discovered that this had already been emptied).

This was how it looked the following day


2 died, and dozens were injured in the accident. Our neighbour whose house was hit (but wasn't home that night) was well looked after, and we had our entire garden replanted (the CO2 had freeze dried all the plants and shrubs).

That was one of those episodes in life that will stick in the memory until the bitter end.

When a Greenie says to you though, "take the train, think of your carbon footprint", you can say "well a single train journey can emit up to 316tonnes of CO2"

If you're interested, the Government Health and Safety Executive write up of the crash is here: http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/doc...rscote1996.pdf

[V8Ian]

The biggest worry was that there was a 46tonne tanker of aviation fuel on the same train (though later on, it was discovered that this had already been emptied).

An empty fuel vessel is no less dangerous than a full one, more so under certain circumstances.

[sheerluck]

An empty fuel vessel is no less dangerous than a full one, more so under certain circumstances.

Thankfully, the empty fuel tanker was not in the primary crash zone, but was just behind the wreckage. But yes, there was enough concern to evacuate the surrounding area.

But ultimately it made us look at what exactly what was thundering past our house. LP gas tankers, aviation fuel, even nuclear waste pass by our house at 80mph every day, and we never even gave it a thought.

Realistically (with the exception of the two poor souls who perished), it could have been far, far worse. And all caused by a wheel set fracturing due to fatigue.

[sheerluck]

And some rather lousy Youtube video of the clean up afterwards
rickerscote train crash 8th march 1996 clean up - YouTube

rickerscote train crash clear up 2 - YouTube

These were shot from the rail bridge that I described in my first post.