1 00:00:06,400 --> 00:00:08,140 100 years ago, 2 00:00:08,140 --> 00:00:10,100 during the First World War, 3 00:00:10,100 --> 00:00:13,100 a massive accident occurred in the south of Scotland. 4 00:00:16,500 --> 00:00:19,100 Hundreds died in a raging inferno. 5 00:00:20,780 --> 00:00:25,500 The truth of what caused it has been shrouded in mystery to this day. 6 00:00:32,100 --> 00:00:36,460 This is very close to the border between Scotland and England 7 00:00:36,460 --> 00:00:39,860 and the fields here today are every bit as peaceful as they would 8 00:00:39,860 --> 00:00:43,380 have been at the outbreak of the First World War. 9 00:00:43,380 --> 00:00:47,220 But, by 1915, things were starting to change... 10 00:00:47,220 --> 00:00:50,220 on the sea, in the trenches and in government. 11 00:00:50,220 --> 00:00:53,300 The reality of the Great War was beginning to dawn. 12 00:00:54,820 --> 00:00:57,580 Military disasters were plaguing the government 13 00:00:57,580 --> 00:01:01,100 and more men were desperately needed at the front line. 14 00:01:01,100 --> 00:01:04,500 The strain was beginning to take its toll on the government - 15 00:01:04,500 --> 00:01:07,780 who were hopelessly unprepared for the war - and on Britain's railways. 16 00:01:07,780 --> 00:01:09,180 And then, in May 1915, 17 00:01:09,180 --> 00:01:13,180 on the railway line that cuts through these fields, 18 00:01:13,180 --> 00:01:17,100 everyone got precisely what they didn't want - another disaster. 19 00:01:18,820 --> 00:01:21,140 CRASHING 20 00:01:29,660 --> 00:01:34,220 In a huge crash involving five trains, hundreds lost their lives 21 00:01:34,220 --> 00:01:37,340 trapped inside a burning pile of wrecked carriages. 22 00:01:42,060 --> 00:01:43,700 Nobody in the UK has heard about 23 00:01:43,700 --> 00:01:45,100 the Quintinshill crash, 24 00:01:45,100 --> 00:01:46,940 yet it was the railway's Titanic. 25 00:01:48,700 --> 00:01:52,100 In the investigations, inquests and trials that followed, 26 00:01:52,100 --> 00:01:54,460 the railwaymen on duty were imprisoned 27 00:01:54,460 --> 00:01:56,820 for causing the entire catastrophe. 28 00:01:58,540 --> 00:02:01,340 Now, some believe there was a cover-up to prevent 29 00:02:01,340 --> 00:02:03,380 the blame going any further. 30 00:02:05,020 --> 00:02:10,060 There had been a deal struck and this deal meant that they were 31 00:02:10,060 --> 00:02:14,100 never going to get the defence that they would otherwise have expected. 32 00:02:14,100 --> 00:02:17,180 I'm going to look again at what happened, 33 00:02:17,180 --> 00:02:20,100 examine the case against the signalmen 34 00:02:20,100 --> 00:02:22,980 and see why the accident was so deadly. 35 00:02:22,980 --> 00:02:25,940 Was this regarded as safe? 36 00:02:25,940 --> 00:02:28,180 First 106 coffins, 37 00:02:28,180 --> 00:02:33,060 53 of those were full of ash, essentially, 38 00:02:33,060 --> 00:02:35,100 incinerated bodies. 39 00:02:35,100 --> 00:02:38,340 I'm also going to hear the arguments that were never put 40 00:02:38,340 --> 00:02:41,260 in Britain's deadliest rail disaster. 41 00:03:01,260 --> 00:03:05,020 It's a bright, sunny morning on the 22nd of May 1915 42 00:03:05,020 --> 00:03:07,700 at Quintinshill near Gretna. 43 00:03:07,700 --> 00:03:10,420 There is little sense, here, that the country is at war 44 00:03:10,420 --> 00:03:14,340 and no suggestion at all that, in less than ten minutes, 45 00:03:14,340 --> 00:03:17,260 the pressures of that war will fill these fields 46 00:03:17,260 --> 00:03:19,860 with hundreds of dead and injured soldiers. 47 00:03:22,980 --> 00:03:27,420 At the nearby signal box on the main line between London and Glasgow, 48 00:03:27,420 --> 00:03:30,380 the signalmen have just changed shift. 49 00:03:34,900 --> 00:03:37,780 George Meakin has just finished his turn, 50 00:03:37,780 --> 00:03:40,300 leaving his replacement, James Tinsley, 51 00:03:40,300 --> 00:03:43,260 to deal with the traffic passing through Quintinshill. 52 00:03:44,580 --> 00:03:46,540 BELL DINGS 53 00:03:49,060 --> 00:03:51,180 See the price of eggs is going up again. 54 00:03:56,500 --> 00:03:59,580 Waiting on one of the main lines just outside the box 55 00:03:59,580 --> 00:04:02,020 is a local train from Carlisle facing north. 56 00:04:04,780 --> 00:04:07,420 The only passengers on board are all five members of 57 00:04:07,420 --> 00:04:09,620 the Nimmo family from Newcastle. 58 00:04:11,500 --> 00:04:15,020 Mrs Nimmo has left her two young girls with her husband 59 00:04:15,020 --> 00:04:17,060 to comfort her son, Dickson. 60 00:04:31,260 --> 00:04:35,380 At the same time, heading south are around 500 soldiers 61 00:04:35,380 --> 00:04:39,460 of the 1/7th Royal Scots Battalion on their way to Liverpool. 62 00:04:41,020 --> 00:04:43,980 As the railways are vital to the movement of supplies 63 00:04:43,980 --> 00:04:46,980 and troops, the government are now in charge 64 00:04:46,980 --> 00:04:50,180 and their specially commissioned troop train is late. 65 00:04:51,740 --> 00:04:53,260 Earlier that day, 66 00:04:53,260 --> 00:04:57,900 the soldiers had begun their journey at Larbert in central Scotland. 67 00:04:57,900 --> 00:05:02,540 It was a very local battalion, it drew its officers and soldiers 68 00:05:02,540 --> 00:05:06,620 from Leith, Portobello and Musselburgh, 69 00:05:06,620 --> 00:05:08,940 just down the coast from Edinburgh. 70 00:05:08,940 --> 00:05:11,060 They were very much a family affair. 71 00:05:12,580 --> 00:05:14,340 Many fathers and sons, 72 00:05:14,340 --> 00:05:17,100 and many had been in the battalion 73 00:05:17,100 --> 00:05:18,780 for 10, 12, 15 years 74 00:05:18,780 --> 00:05:22,540 by the time the war came. They were very close. 75 00:05:22,540 --> 00:05:25,980 Technically, you had to be 17 to join. 76 00:05:25,980 --> 00:05:27,740 A number undoubtedly slipped through 77 00:05:27,740 --> 00:05:32,580 saying, "I'm 17," when I think some were probably as low as 15. 78 00:05:32,580 --> 00:05:36,060 Nobody asked for birth certificates, they took their word for it. 79 00:05:37,300 --> 00:05:40,500 They'd been waiting since August 1914 80 00:05:40,500 --> 00:05:42,980 and now, at last, they were going to war. 81 00:05:44,660 --> 00:05:47,980 This is what they'd joined for - they'd been worried that the war 82 00:05:47,980 --> 00:05:50,060 was going to be over before Christmas 83 00:05:50,060 --> 00:05:51,820 and they might have missed out. 84 00:05:58,660 --> 00:06:00,620 The train had left very early in the morning, 85 00:06:00,620 --> 00:06:02,420 it had then been delayed by traffic, 86 00:06:02,420 --> 00:06:05,140 but then, when it gets onto the main line towards Carlisle, 87 00:06:05,140 --> 00:06:08,580 all the reports suggest that it is going very quickly indeed. That... 88 00:06:08,580 --> 00:06:11,980 People talk about it...70mph. 89 00:06:25,460 --> 00:06:27,460 BELL DINGS 90 00:06:27,460 --> 00:06:29,100 The prices only go one way. 91 00:06:29,100 --> 00:06:33,020 Potatoes are going down. Really? 92 00:06:33,020 --> 00:06:36,820 At 6:42, Tinsley makes the last of a series of mistakes 93 00:06:36,820 --> 00:06:39,980 that will have catastrophic consequences. 94 00:06:39,980 --> 00:06:42,300 Best tonic medicine you can get. BELL DINGS 95 00:06:42,300 --> 00:06:44,420 Why do you think I need that? 96 00:06:44,420 --> 00:06:48,300 Nerve instability, influenza, indigestion, 97 00:06:48,300 --> 00:06:50,060 sleeplessness, exhaustion... 98 00:06:50,060 --> 00:06:52,420 Oh, that's a good one, exhaustion. 99 00:07:28,180 --> 00:07:31,700 From this moment on, the fate of hundreds are sealed. 100 00:07:43,220 --> 00:07:45,140 BABY BABBLES 101 00:08:09,420 --> 00:08:12,460 Brake! WHEELS SQUEAK 102 00:08:17,900 --> 00:08:20,020 CLOCK TICKS 103 00:08:21,100 --> 00:08:23,100 CRASHING 104 00:08:34,060 --> 00:08:36,020 The first to arrive on the scene 105 00:08:36,020 --> 00:08:38,500 fought their way to the main-line tracks. 106 00:08:38,500 --> 00:08:40,580 There, they found that the troop train 107 00:08:40,580 --> 00:08:42,900 had smashed head-on into the waiting local. 108 00:08:47,700 --> 00:08:50,060 At the centre of the crash was a terrible scene 109 00:08:50,060 --> 00:08:52,580 of crushed and splintered wooden coaches 110 00:08:52,580 --> 00:08:54,460 filled with hundreds of soldiers 111 00:08:54,460 --> 00:08:56,420 and the smell of escaping gas. 112 00:09:06,740 --> 00:09:09,300 Some soldiers manage to free themselves. 113 00:09:09,300 --> 00:09:11,660 Others are helped by uninjured troops 114 00:09:11,660 --> 00:09:13,740 arriving from the back of the train. 115 00:09:15,900 --> 00:09:18,100 Any uninjured men, follow me! 116 00:09:20,020 --> 00:09:22,940 Then, only one minute after the crash, 117 00:09:22,940 --> 00:09:24,780 came a second disaster. 118 00:09:29,620 --> 00:09:31,580 CRASHING 119 00:09:37,980 --> 00:09:41,020 An overnight sleeper from London to Glasgow 120 00:09:41,020 --> 00:09:43,420 ploughed into the wreckage on the tracks, 121 00:09:43,420 --> 00:09:48,260 spilling yet more hot coals into the lethal mix of gas and wood. 122 00:09:52,380 --> 00:09:56,220 Contemporary newspaper reports describe, in vivid detail, 123 00:09:56,220 --> 00:09:59,940 the horrors experienced by soldiers in the flaming wreckage. 124 00:10:01,540 --> 00:10:04,860 You almost only have to read the headlines to get a sense of... 125 00:10:04,860 --> 00:10:08,660 the disbelief and the horror. "Men Roasted To Death". 126 00:10:10,060 --> 00:10:13,660 "Horror Upon Horror". "Graphic Story Of Disaster". 127 00:10:17,620 --> 00:10:20,220 And the coverage just goes on and on. 128 00:10:20,220 --> 00:10:23,300 Private James Arnott, he was interviewed 129 00:10:23,300 --> 00:10:26,340 while he was in Carlisle hospital with a broken leg. 130 00:10:26,340 --> 00:10:29,780 "He said that, when the second collision occurred, 131 00:10:29,780 --> 00:10:32,060 "the bottom came out of the compartment 132 00:10:32,060 --> 00:10:34,740 "and he, along with Private Arthur Colville, 133 00:10:34,740 --> 00:10:37,100 "Musselburgh, dropped down and crawled along 134 00:10:37,100 --> 00:10:38,380 "searching for a way out." 135 00:10:40,860 --> 00:10:42,940 PANTING 136 00:10:44,220 --> 00:10:47,900 We have to go back. Why? We have to go back. We can't. 137 00:10:47,900 --> 00:10:50,420 The report describes how the soldiers faced up 138 00:10:50,420 --> 00:10:53,780 to a dreadful death when they realised they were trapped, 139 00:10:53,780 --> 00:10:56,260 with flames both in front and behind them. 140 00:11:02,660 --> 00:11:04,220 Are you OK? 141 00:11:04,220 --> 00:11:06,940 Although James Arnott was rescued, 142 00:11:06,940 --> 00:11:09,100 Arthur Colville perished in the wreck. 143 00:11:12,300 --> 00:11:14,660 "Suffering from a broken leg and other injuries, 144 00:11:14,660 --> 00:11:15,940 "he remained conscious 145 00:11:15,940 --> 00:11:19,020 "while he lay for several hours till placed aboard an ambulance. 146 00:11:19,020 --> 00:11:22,340 "During that time, he gazed on the horrible scene." 147 00:11:27,700 --> 00:11:30,380 15-year-old Peter Cumming was one of those that 148 00:11:30,380 --> 00:11:32,180 freed himself from the wreckage. 149 00:11:32,180 --> 00:11:33,740 John? 150 00:11:35,180 --> 00:11:37,100 "I was sitting still asleep in a compartment 151 00:11:37,100 --> 00:11:38,500 towards the centre of the train 152 00:11:38,500 --> 00:11:40,500 "when I was awakened by this terrible crash. 153 00:11:40,500 --> 00:11:42,900 "I remember realising that disaster had struck us 154 00:11:42,900 --> 00:11:45,380 "and my immediate thought was, 'It's sabotage.' 155 00:11:48,500 --> 00:11:50,220 "My first thought was for my brother." 156 00:11:50,220 --> 00:11:51,380 John? 157 00:11:51,380 --> 00:11:53,940 "And I began to search feverishly for him." 158 00:11:53,940 --> 00:11:55,300 John?! 159 00:12:05,580 --> 00:12:10,540 After some time, Peter found his brother, injured but alive. 160 00:12:15,860 --> 00:12:18,380 "When we got to Carlisle, I was frantic 161 00:12:18,380 --> 00:12:20,460 "and, although I had hardly any money, 162 00:12:20,460 --> 00:12:22,580 "I managed to stop a complete stranger. 163 00:12:22,580 --> 00:12:25,220 "I gave him three shillings, all I had in the world, 164 00:12:25,220 --> 00:12:28,020 "and begged him to wire my mother and tell her that my father 165 00:12:28,020 --> 00:12:31,420 "and I were all right, and that only my brother had been injured. 166 00:12:32,980 --> 00:12:34,700 "My brother died soon after." 167 00:12:36,340 --> 00:12:40,420 There's some upsettingly vivid descriptions 168 00:12:40,420 --> 00:12:43,020 of what people experienced. 169 00:12:43,020 --> 00:12:46,900 This is from Piper Thomas Clachers who said, 170 00:12:46,900 --> 00:12:48,860 "I had only just lain back to sleep 171 00:12:48,860 --> 00:12:51,460 "when all of a sudden, the carriages seemed to crumple up 172 00:12:51,460 --> 00:12:52,740 "like a melodeon. 173 00:12:52,740 --> 00:12:55,420 "Fire shot up right before my face, it must have been gas, 174 00:12:55,420 --> 00:12:57,260 "it was such a sudden and big flame." 175 00:12:58,700 --> 00:13:00,500 COUGHING 176 00:13:02,020 --> 00:13:05,100 Clachers was badly burnt but he managed to free himself 177 00:13:05,100 --> 00:13:07,100 and help others out of the wreckage. 178 00:13:09,580 --> 00:13:11,500 Is there anybody there? 179 00:13:11,500 --> 00:13:14,940 Many of the trapped men faced a dreadful dilemma as the fire 180 00:13:14,940 --> 00:13:19,980 drew nearer. Some lost their limbs to doctors with carpenter's saws, 181 00:13:19,980 --> 00:13:25,100 some opted to lose much more. Clachers continues. 182 00:13:25,100 --> 00:13:27,060 "It was an awful sight, right enough. 183 00:13:27,060 --> 00:13:30,500 "I saw a private lying under an engine tender with just his feet 184 00:13:30,500 --> 00:13:32,620 "and part of his legs sticking out. 185 00:13:32,620 --> 00:13:35,060 "He asked to be shot and, as he could not recover, 186 00:13:35,060 --> 00:13:36,860 "an officer shot him with a revolver. 187 00:13:40,700 --> 00:13:43,220 "Another private was caught between buffers and jammed 188 00:13:43,220 --> 00:13:44,980 "and fire was all around him. 189 00:13:44,980 --> 00:13:47,220 "I saw him cut his throat with his jackknife." 190 00:13:49,220 --> 00:13:52,620 For hours, the fire roared through the wreckage unchecked 191 00:13:52,620 --> 00:13:55,420 and the uninjured soldiers had to rescue those comrades 192 00:13:55,420 --> 00:13:57,380 they could, virtually unaided. 193 00:13:58,620 --> 00:14:01,260 Soldiers that could not be reached faced a long wait 194 00:14:01,260 --> 00:14:03,260 for an agonising death. 195 00:14:05,940 --> 00:14:10,060 Only after three hours did the local volunteer fire brigade arrive, 196 00:14:10,060 --> 00:14:12,620 completely ill-equipped for what faced them. 197 00:14:14,900 --> 00:14:18,660 Frederick Tassell from Carlisle was one of the first photographers 198 00:14:18,660 --> 00:14:20,380 to reach the site. 199 00:14:20,380 --> 00:14:25,140 My father had been on the spot very shortly after the accident 200 00:14:25,140 --> 00:14:27,380 and started taking photographs 201 00:14:27,380 --> 00:14:30,100 and also helped looking after the injured. 202 00:14:30,100 --> 00:14:31,780 His son, Archie, 203 00:14:31,780 --> 00:14:35,540 arrived the next day as bodies were still being recovered. 204 00:14:35,540 --> 00:14:39,300 He recorded his memories of the crash in 1984. 205 00:14:39,300 --> 00:14:41,100 I was a boy of 15 at school 206 00:14:41,100 --> 00:14:46,020 and I went out on a Sunday morning hoping to get some more photographs 207 00:14:46,020 --> 00:14:48,660 but I received a tremendous impression 208 00:14:48,660 --> 00:14:50,380 of the general scene. 209 00:14:52,500 --> 00:14:56,020 It was the locomotives lying on their sides, the general smash-up 210 00:14:56,020 --> 00:14:59,180 and debris and, er... 211 00:14:59,180 --> 00:15:03,620 on the fields at Quintinshill adjoining the embankment 212 00:15:03,620 --> 00:15:07,980 there were 77 coffins covered with black cloth laid out 213 00:15:07,980 --> 00:15:12,380 in the sunshine and there were relatives moving about from coffin 214 00:15:12,380 --> 00:15:15,260 to coffin, lifting the lids, trying to recognise their dead. 215 00:15:22,900 --> 00:15:25,700 I've got a postcard here of the men standing for a roll call 216 00:15:25,700 --> 00:15:27,620 after the accident. 217 00:15:27,620 --> 00:15:30,020 They understood that it was their duty to go 218 00:15:30,020 --> 00:15:31,900 and fight on foreign fields. 219 00:15:31,900 --> 00:15:34,500 What they could not possibly have expected, though, 220 00:15:34,500 --> 00:15:36,100 was that almost half of their comrades 221 00:15:36,100 --> 00:15:39,500 would lie dead before they were even out of the country. 222 00:15:39,500 --> 00:15:41,780 Grayton, AB. 223 00:15:41,780 --> 00:15:43,660 Roxburgh, NS. 224 00:15:43,660 --> 00:15:47,500 The commanding officer graded the survivors 225 00:15:47,500 --> 00:15:50,940 and literally wrote their names down in a notebook. 226 00:15:50,940 --> 00:15:53,900 There were 55 soldiers and 7 officers, 227 00:15:53,900 --> 00:15:57,900 62 out of the 498 228 00:15:57,900 --> 00:16:02,500 who'd set out from Larbert who were uninjured or not dead. 229 00:16:02,500 --> 00:16:04,660 Thank you Corporal Grayton, stand at ease. 230 00:16:04,660 --> 00:16:08,100 The ordeal for the survivors didn't end there. 231 00:16:08,100 --> 00:16:11,860 As far as the army was concerned, there was still a war to fight 232 00:16:11,860 --> 00:16:15,300 and these men were bound for the doomed campaign in Gallipoli. 233 00:16:16,660 --> 00:16:18,540 The... 234 00:16:18,540 --> 00:16:24,420 survivors after the roll call were taken by train to Carlisle, 235 00:16:24,420 --> 00:16:29,940 they got there late afternoon, fiveish, erm, 236 00:16:29,940 --> 00:16:34,020 went to the barracks there, were given a meal 237 00:16:34,020 --> 00:16:39,100 and an element of rest but, later that evening, 238 00:16:39,100 --> 00:16:42,180 marched from the barracks back to the railway station 239 00:16:42,180 --> 00:16:47,100 and went on down to Liverpool to join the troop ship. 240 00:16:47,100 --> 00:16:50,100 Only at the 11th hour did the War Office change their mind 241 00:16:50,100 --> 00:16:53,100 and send the men back home to Edinburgh. 242 00:16:53,100 --> 00:16:55,940 It was an insensitive end to a dreadful day. 243 00:17:01,220 --> 00:17:04,220 The dead were buried throughout Scotland and the north of England. 244 00:17:06,140 --> 00:17:10,620 Among them was Mrs Nimmo and her son Dickson, buried in Newcastle. 245 00:17:13,420 --> 00:17:17,260 The driver and firemen of the troop train were interred at Carlisle. 246 00:17:20,180 --> 00:17:22,540 And perhaps the most tragic burials 247 00:17:22,540 --> 00:17:25,940 were those for people that could not be identified. 248 00:17:25,940 --> 00:17:29,820 Here in Glasgow lie the remains of four unclaimed children. 249 00:17:38,420 --> 00:17:42,740 But it's here, in a mass grave at the Rosebank Cemetery in Leith, 250 00:17:42,740 --> 00:17:45,140 that most of the soldiers came to be buried. 251 00:17:54,660 --> 00:17:57,940 Many of the men had been recruited from the streets around here 252 00:17:57,940 --> 00:18:01,740 and it felt as if the whole town of Leith had turned out to watch 253 00:18:01,740 --> 00:18:04,860 the seemingly endless procession of coffins pass by. 254 00:18:10,780 --> 00:18:14,460 The funeral procession took three hours to complete its journey. 255 00:18:17,220 --> 00:18:21,220 There wasn't a family untouched by the disaster 256 00:18:21,220 --> 00:18:26,380 and it has always been there in the Leith memory. 257 00:18:27,540 --> 00:18:29,820 So what exactly happened that morning? 258 00:18:29,820 --> 00:18:32,940 How did two experienced signalmen get it so wrong? 259 00:18:34,460 --> 00:18:38,860 And why did so many people die in such dreadful circumstances 260 00:18:38,860 --> 00:18:41,140 so that they now lie in a mass grave? 261 00:18:45,660 --> 00:18:49,100 It was at the Board Of Trade enquiry, held only three days after 262 00:18:49,100 --> 00:18:52,620 the accident, that most of the facts came out. 263 00:18:52,620 --> 00:18:56,140 It appeared to uncover a catalogue of errors, mistakes 264 00:18:56,140 --> 00:18:58,820 and a blatant disregard for the company's rules. 265 00:19:00,260 --> 00:19:03,780 Tinsley admitted that he'd been late to work that day, as he often was, 266 00:19:03,780 --> 00:19:05,940 and there was an arrangement between him 267 00:19:05,940 --> 00:19:09,420 and Meakin that they had practised many times before. 268 00:19:09,420 --> 00:19:12,900 From the moment that the shift-change should have occurred, 269 00:19:12,900 --> 00:19:14,700 Meakin wrote the times of every signal 270 00:19:14,700 --> 00:19:17,300 and train movement on scraps of paper. 271 00:19:17,300 --> 00:19:19,140 Tinsley then spent some minutes copying 272 00:19:19,140 --> 00:19:21,260 the train times into the register, 273 00:19:21,260 --> 00:19:24,340 so that a change of handwriting wouldn't give away their deception. 274 00:19:28,140 --> 00:19:30,700 There were more men in the box than were allowed. 275 00:19:30,700 --> 00:19:32,340 William Young, the brakesman 276 00:19:32,340 --> 00:19:35,340 from one of the goods trains, was warming himself by the fire. 277 00:19:35,340 --> 00:19:38,900 The suggestion was that there might have been distracting chatter. 278 00:19:41,100 --> 00:19:43,060 Meakin made two errors. 279 00:19:43,060 --> 00:19:45,420 He did not block the line to traffic 280 00:19:45,420 --> 00:19:48,900 while the local train was on the line. 281 00:19:48,900 --> 00:19:51,700 He also didn't use a caller on the signal lever 282 00:19:51,700 --> 00:19:55,380 that would have prevented either man from later setting the signal 283 00:19:55,380 --> 00:19:57,860 to allow the troop train to enter the section. 284 00:20:02,260 --> 00:20:05,460 These mistakes meant Tinsley was able to send messages 285 00:20:05,460 --> 00:20:08,460 and pull the signal levers to allow the troop train to pass 286 00:20:08,460 --> 00:20:10,300 through the Quintinshill section, 287 00:20:10,300 --> 00:20:13,020 even though there was a train standing on the line. 288 00:20:16,220 --> 00:20:20,700 In his defence, Tinsley said that he just forgot the train was there, 289 00:20:20,700 --> 00:20:24,540 despite having got a lift on the locomotive only 17 minutes earlier. 290 00:20:25,980 --> 00:20:29,620 During the enquiry, the company was clear about its rules 291 00:20:29,620 --> 00:20:33,340 and the men were clearly seen to have broken them. 292 00:20:33,340 --> 00:20:37,140 After just one day of evidence, the enquiry was adjourned. 293 00:20:37,140 --> 00:20:41,020 On the 28th May, the procurator fiscal depute from Dumfries 294 00:20:41,020 --> 00:20:43,020 ordered that Tinsley be arrested. 295 00:20:49,900 --> 00:20:54,340 Now, a century later, and with the benefit of hindsight, 296 00:20:54,340 --> 00:20:57,940 I'm going to take a fresh look at the case, starting here, 297 00:20:57,940 --> 00:21:00,580 close to the Ribblehead Viaduct in Yorkshire. 298 00:21:05,540 --> 00:21:08,820 The Quintinshill signal box doesn't exist any more. 299 00:21:08,820 --> 00:21:12,540 It's been swept away by a tide of modernisation. 300 00:21:14,380 --> 00:21:17,380 But we can still see what it was like to work there 301 00:21:17,380 --> 00:21:19,540 because some of the boxes are still standing 302 00:21:19,540 --> 00:21:22,940 and the people inside them are still doing more or less the same job. 303 00:21:22,940 --> 00:21:25,340 And there's one up ahead. 304 00:21:25,340 --> 00:21:27,500 The signal box here has almost the same 305 00:21:27,500 --> 00:21:30,060 layout as the one at Quintinshill 306 00:21:30,060 --> 00:21:33,860 and one of the signalman inside has operated this box for ten years - 307 00:21:34,980 --> 00:21:39,940 around the same length of time as Tinsley and Meakin operated theirs. 308 00:21:39,940 --> 00:21:43,060 I would have just assumed that by now it would have been, 309 00:21:43,060 --> 00:21:45,940 I don't know, automated, electronic, all happen, push a button. 310 00:21:45,940 --> 00:21:50,140 I wasn't still imagining big, heavy, metal levers. 311 00:21:50,140 --> 00:21:53,860 I think, yeah, it'll be a good 50% plus of the rail network 312 00:21:53,860 --> 00:21:56,380 is still run with levers. 313 00:21:56,380 --> 00:21:59,380 You know, manually operated with bell signals. 314 00:21:59,380 --> 00:22:02,300 A set-up which will have been similar to Quintinshill. 315 00:22:02,300 --> 00:22:08,060 So what are the responsibilities of a signalman in a box like this? 316 00:22:08,060 --> 00:22:11,060 And are they the same now as they've always been? 317 00:22:11,060 --> 00:22:14,020 Pretty much so. We have to ensure the safety of the train. 318 00:22:14,020 --> 00:22:16,700 There's a list of rules and regulations as long as your arm 319 00:22:16,700 --> 00:22:18,900 and we have to just ensure that whatever goes on, 320 00:22:18,900 --> 00:22:22,380 we have to be able to run trains on time as best we can. 321 00:22:22,380 --> 00:22:25,380 Do you know the first thing that strikes me as a surprise 322 00:22:25,380 --> 00:22:29,260 is the fact that when you are working these levers, 323 00:22:29,260 --> 00:22:31,100 you've got your back to the traffic. 324 00:22:31,100 --> 00:22:33,060 I would just have assumed, if you'd asked me, 325 00:22:33,060 --> 00:22:35,940 that you'd be doing all this while you're looking at the track. 326 00:22:35,940 --> 00:22:37,980 I don't believe it makes any difference. 327 00:22:37,980 --> 00:22:40,580 I've worked in signal boxes where the frame is by the window 328 00:22:40,580 --> 00:22:43,100 and to be honest, you can't actually see as much as you do here. 329 00:22:43,100 --> 00:22:45,100 You do your business here and you can turn round 330 00:22:45,100 --> 00:22:47,140 and you get a full view of the train all the time, 331 00:22:47,140 --> 00:22:49,260 where if you can picture that being by the window, 332 00:22:49,260 --> 00:22:51,820 you are obstructed by the equipment. Of course, yes. 333 00:22:51,820 --> 00:22:54,700 You're not really going to be seeing out of the window at all, are you? 334 00:22:54,700 --> 00:22:56,860 Aye, you actually do get a better... 335 00:22:56,860 --> 00:23:00,220 And when it comes to the view, in terms of the track layout, 336 00:23:00,220 --> 00:23:03,580 is that, again, more or less what was at Quintinshill? 337 00:23:03,580 --> 00:23:05,820 Two main lines, so it would have been exactly the same. 338 00:23:05,820 --> 00:23:09,900 So the two central tracks are for the trains coming and going? 339 00:23:09,900 --> 00:23:11,420 They are the mainline, yes. 340 00:23:11,420 --> 00:23:15,500 And then the two sets beyond are temporary positions 341 00:23:15,500 --> 00:23:18,340 for them to wait for things to clear? 342 00:23:18,340 --> 00:23:20,780 Yeah, let trains pass them. Yeah. 343 00:23:20,780 --> 00:23:24,900 Do signalman know about Quintinshill? 344 00:23:24,900 --> 00:23:29,780 Is that part of the lore of men working in signal boxes to this day? 345 00:23:29,780 --> 00:23:32,580 It's mentioned. When I was at signalling school it was mentioned 346 00:23:32,580 --> 00:23:34,420 and I know it's still mentioned to lads now 347 00:23:34,420 --> 00:23:35,980 when they go to signalling school. 348 00:23:35,980 --> 00:23:37,100 What happened there, 349 00:23:37,100 --> 00:23:40,380 it's an easy sort of thing that kind of happened, the distraction factor, 350 00:23:40,380 --> 00:23:42,580 but everything is fail-safe on the railway now. 351 00:23:42,580 --> 00:23:45,020 Like, you couldn't possibly do that now. 352 00:23:45,020 --> 00:23:47,540 If you put yourself in the minds of Tinsley and Meakin, 353 00:23:47,540 --> 00:23:52,300 what do you think explains what they did and didn't do? 354 00:23:52,300 --> 00:23:54,380 Well, it's the old... 355 00:23:54,380 --> 00:23:57,100 We can go through it with signals, and people agree and disagree, 356 00:23:57,100 --> 00:24:00,820 the most dangerous part of our job, I would say, is shift change. 357 00:24:00,820 --> 00:24:02,980 Why? It's just, you are ready to go, 358 00:24:02,980 --> 00:24:06,380 you're passing on your stuff to your man and you need to listen carefully. 359 00:24:06,380 --> 00:24:08,460 Stuff gets forgotten, but, like, them two, 360 00:24:08,460 --> 00:24:09,980 I think they've swapped over, 361 00:24:09,980 --> 00:24:12,260 they've had the distraction of the late-running train 362 00:24:12,260 --> 00:24:13,940 and they hadn't done their basic... 363 00:24:13,940 --> 00:24:15,900 These reminder appliances, 364 00:24:15,900 --> 00:24:18,740 that's all they are, but we're told to use them. 365 00:24:18,740 --> 00:24:21,380 It's so simple. Is this the collar? That's the collar. 366 00:24:21,380 --> 00:24:23,340 You just pop it on a lever. 367 00:24:23,340 --> 00:24:25,860 And that's there to remind you not to play with that? 368 00:24:25,860 --> 00:24:27,060 It's as simple as that. 369 00:24:27,060 --> 00:24:29,460 You can't pull that. Once that's on, stop. 370 00:24:29,460 --> 00:24:31,540 It's as simple as that and they didn't put them on. 371 00:24:35,940 --> 00:24:37,860 It's the simplest explanation. 372 00:24:37,860 --> 00:24:40,940 The accident happened just after a shift change. 373 00:24:40,940 --> 00:24:43,820 The signalmen clearly broke the rules and it was them, 374 00:24:43,820 --> 00:24:46,260 Meakin and Tinsley, that caused the tragedy. 375 00:24:50,980 --> 00:24:52,460 But a century later, 376 00:24:52,460 --> 00:24:56,740 a similar enquiry would probably not come to the same conclusions. 377 00:24:56,740 --> 00:25:00,140 And it would start with very different assumptions. 378 00:25:03,900 --> 00:25:07,100 It's a very, very rare accident that has a single cause. 379 00:25:07,100 --> 00:25:09,060 NEWSREADER: Just after eight this morning, 380 00:25:09,060 --> 00:25:10,700 two packed commuter trains 381 00:25:10,700 --> 00:25:13,580 collided near Paddington station in West London. 382 00:25:13,580 --> 00:25:16,380 It was the worst rail accident in over ten years. 383 00:25:18,500 --> 00:25:20,980 Unlike the Quintinshill Board of Trade enquiry, 384 00:25:20,980 --> 00:25:23,180 which heard evidence for only one day, 385 00:25:23,180 --> 00:25:25,660 the lengthy enquiry into this crash at Paddington 386 00:25:25,660 --> 00:25:28,300 found a wide-ranging set of causes for the accident. 387 00:25:30,260 --> 00:25:32,780 One of the features, looking at any major accident, 388 00:25:32,780 --> 00:25:37,060 is there will always be a whole sequence of events 389 00:25:37,060 --> 00:25:38,780 related to each other, 390 00:25:38,780 --> 00:25:42,580 one of which led to the other and, had that not been the case, 391 00:25:42,580 --> 00:25:46,340 the following wouldn't have happened. 392 00:25:46,340 --> 00:25:48,620 The unfortunate thing about major accidents 393 00:25:48,620 --> 00:25:52,620 is when you get to the other side of them, we've had the accident, 394 00:25:52,620 --> 00:25:54,340 we are looking back, 395 00:25:54,340 --> 00:25:56,780 we can all look at it and say it was inevitable. 396 00:25:56,780 --> 00:26:00,460 With the set of events that were in place, 397 00:26:00,460 --> 00:26:02,700 it was inevitable that that was going to happen. 398 00:26:04,380 --> 00:26:06,620 The extensive examination into events 399 00:26:06,620 --> 00:26:08,660 that led to the Paddington rail crash 400 00:26:08,660 --> 00:26:10,980 involved teams of forensic investigators. 401 00:26:13,340 --> 00:26:16,300 Those advantages obviously weren't available to the people 402 00:26:16,300 --> 00:26:18,820 looking into the accident at Quintinshill. 403 00:26:21,060 --> 00:26:25,300 But one WA Paterson used the technology of 1915 404 00:26:25,300 --> 00:26:28,380 to lay out the undisputed facts on a simple drawing. 405 00:26:30,020 --> 00:26:33,140 Directly outside the box were four tracks. 406 00:26:33,140 --> 00:26:35,340 The two main lines were at the centre. 407 00:26:35,340 --> 00:26:37,700 One northbound to Glasgow and Edinburgh, 408 00:26:37,700 --> 00:26:40,300 the other southbound to Carlisle and London. 409 00:26:42,100 --> 00:26:45,620 On each side, a passing loop allowed slow-running trains 410 00:26:45,620 --> 00:26:47,580 to be moved aside temporarily 411 00:26:47,580 --> 00:26:50,700 so that the fast-running trains could pass at speed. 412 00:26:52,660 --> 00:26:56,780 The crisis that confronts the signalman 413 00:26:56,780 --> 00:27:00,060 at roughly 6:30 on that morning 414 00:27:00,060 --> 00:27:04,780 is that two overnight sleepers from Euston to Scotland are running late. 415 00:27:04,780 --> 00:27:08,580 And a local train, which normally follows them, 416 00:27:08,580 --> 00:27:10,380 has been sent in front of them 417 00:27:10,380 --> 00:27:14,260 because of the need to make connections further on in Scotland. 418 00:27:14,260 --> 00:27:15,980 That then raises the question 419 00:27:15,980 --> 00:27:18,940 how the express is going to get past the local train. 420 00:27:18,940 --> 00:27:21,700 The overnight sleepers were the most prestigious trains 421 00:27:21,700 --> 00:27:23,380 running at the time. 422 00:27:23,380 --> 00:27:25,580 It was the quickest and most practical way 423 00:27:25,580 --> 00:27:27,540 of travelling from London to Scotland, 424 00:27:27,540 --> 00:27:31,100 and wealthy passengers were willing to pay to travel in style. 425 00:27:34,580 --> 00:27:36,420 However, the two sleepers, 426 00:27:36,420 --> 00:27:39,420 one for Edinburgh and one bound for Glasgow, 427 00:27:39,420 --> 00:27:42,820 had both been delayed before they had even left London. 428 00:27:44,540 --> 00:27:47,140 And they were still running late when they departed Carlisle 429 00:27:47,140 --> 00:27:51,420 for the final leg north, now chasing the slow-running local train. 430 00:27:52,940 --> 00:27:54,620 After Carlisle, the best place 431 00:27:54,620 --> 00:27:57,180 that the expresses would be able to pass the local 432 00:27:57,180 --> 00:27:58,980 would normally be at Quintinshill. 433 00:28:01,220 --> 00:28:04,300 However, the pressures caused by extra wartime traffic 434 00:28:04,300 --> 00:28:07,860 meant that some passing loops were commonly blocked with trains. 435 00:28:09,900 --> 00:28:11,780 At Quintinshill, the northbound loop 436 00:28:11,780 --> 00:28:14,300 had been occupied by a goods train for several hours. 437 00:28:15,700 --> 00:28:20,660 And the southbound loop was about to be filled with an empty coal train. 438 00:28:20,660 --> 00:28:22,380 So you had an immediate conflict. 439 00:28:22,380 --> 00:28:25,060 You had had these long, moving slow, freight trains 440 00:28:25,060 --> 00:28:28,100 travelling at sometimes as slow as 15mph 441 00:28:28,100 --> 00:28:31,460 vying for paths on an otherwise fairly antiquated 442 00:28:31,460 --> 00:28:35,060 and outdated system, with express passenger trains 443 00:28:35,060 --> 00:28:38,220 who were timed to travel at 60mph. 444 00:28:38,220 --> 00:28:42,020 It was Meakin's job to ensure that the expresses were not delayed. 445 00:28:42,020 --> 00:28:47,140 But as the passing loop was full, he had nowhere to put the local. 446 00:28:47,140 --> 00:28:48,940 His decision, 447 00:28:48,940 --> 00:28:53,660 it was something of an unusual occurrence, but not unheard of, 448 00:28:53,660 --> 00:28:57,820 and it actually made sense, was to move the local train 449 00:28:57,820 --> 00:29:01,540 when it arrived at Quintinshill across from the northbound 450 00:29:01,540 --> 00:29:03,620 line to the southbound line. 451 00:29:03,620 --> 00:29:05,780 You might say the wrong line. 452 00:29:05,780 --> 00:29:07,300 Keep it there for a while 453 00:29:07,300 --> 00:29:10,460 to allow the first of these expresses to go through 454 00:29:10,460 --> 00:29:12,540 and then shunt it back on to its proper line, 455 00:29:12,540 --> 00:29:16,100 send it further north where it could then be shunted aside again 456 00:29:16,100 --> 00:29:21,780 to allow the second Anglo-Scottish express to pass it. 457 00:29:21,780 --> 00:29:24,380 One of the things that's so incredibly important, I think, 458 00:29:24,380 --> 00:29:27,620 and it is part of the culture of the railway service, 459 00:29:27,620 --> 00:29:30,740 was the idea that you've got to keep the job moving. 460 00:29:30,740 --> 00:29:33,580 You don't want to be responsible for stopping the job. 461 00:29:33,580 --> 00:29:36,500 This, I think, is an imperative that is always there. 462 00:29:36,500 --> 00:29:40,700 The fact that there are two overnight sleepers leaving Euston 463 00:29:40,700 --> 00:29:43,620 very close together at what is the weekend 464 00:29:43,620 --> 00:29:47,020 clearly demonstrates the extent to which, in 1915, 465 00:29:47,020 --> 00:29:50,260 the railway companies were still trying to carry on, 466 00:29:50,260 --> 00:29:52,700 to a large degree, business as usual. 467 00:29:52,700 --> 00:29:56,340 So we've got the normality on the one hand but, obviously, 468 00:29:56,340 --> 00:29:59,540 on the other hand we've got the imposition of special traffics, 469 00:29:59,540 --> 00:30:03,980 which are clearly priorities for the war effort. 470 00:30:03,980 --> 00:30:07,300 And they included the late-running troop train that was now 471 00:30:07,300 --> 00:30:09,140 descending on Quintinshill. 472 00:30:12,220 --> 00:30:14,860 The War office decreed that this troop train was 473 00:30:14,860 --> 00:30:18,700 so important that it was belled as a 444, 474 00:30:18,700 --> 00:30:21,740 which is ordinarily only given to the Royal train. 475 00:30:21,740 --> 00:30:24,820 Meakin had these trains coming at him from all directions. 476 00:30:24,820 --> 00:30:27,340 He had two priority expresses from the south 477 00:30:27,340 --> 00:30:30,060 and he had this extra priority train from the north. 478 00:30:30,060 --> 00:30:32,020 Something had to give. 479 00:30:32,020 --> 00:30:33,660 It seemed that every train 480 00:30:33,660 --> 00:30:37,060 on its way to or already sitting at Quintinshill that day 481 00:30:37,060 --> 00:30:40,660 was, in effect, a priority - except, that is, the local train 482 00:30:40,660 --> 00:30:43,100 sitting about 60 yards from the signal box. 483 00:30:46,020 --> 00:30:49,300 The local had, in fact, been completely forgotten about 484 00:30:49,300 --> 00:30:54,500 when, at 6:49am, the troop train appeared, heading straight for it. 485 00:30:54,500 --> 00:30:57,100 CRASHING OF METAL AND SPLINTERING OF WOOD 486 00:31:02,740 --> 00:31:04,180 The government's war effort 487 00:31:04,180 --> 00:31:06,980 and the railway company's desire to maintain profit 488 00:31:06,980 --> 00:31:09,300 were in direct conflict and it was this 489 00:31:09,300 --> 00:31:12,540 that caused a logjam of trains at Quintinshill that morning. 490 00:31:16,100 --> 00:31:18,260 And those weren't the only factors that could have 491 00:31:18,260 --> 00:31:20,060 contributed to the crash. 492 00:31:22,340 --> 00:31:24,540 At the Ewart Library in Dumfries, 493 00:31:24,540 --> 00:31:27,660 are more newspaper reports of the disaster. 494 00:31:27,660 --> 00:31:29,820 This is especially fascinating for me. 495 00:31:29,820 --> 00:31:33,780 This is the Annandale Observer from May 28th, 1915. 496 00:31:33,780 --> 00:31:37,300 I trained as a journalist with the Annandale Observer. 497 00:31:37,300 --> 00:31:41,380 That was where I did my indenture as a cub reporter. 498 00:31:42,620 --> 00:31:48,020 It's great to see my journalistic ancestors covering this event. 499 00:31:48,020 --> 00:31:50,020 There's a big double page spread. 500 00:31:50,020 --> 00:31:52,380 "The Gretna Green Railway Accident." 501 00:31:52,380 --> 00:31:54,580 And it's all the sort of headlines you would expect. 502 00:31:54,580 --> 00:31:56,820 "Terrible Railway Calamity." "Double Collision." 503 00:31:56,820 --> 00:31:59,260 "Three Trains On Fire." "Soldiers Burned Alive." 504 00:31:59,260 --> 00:32:00,660 "Men Burnt To Powder." 505 00:32:00,660 --> 00:32:04,460 "I could have taken 12 of the bodies and put them in a riddle," a sieve, 506 00:32:04,460 --> 00:32:06,540 "and it would not have had a bit of flesh left 507 00:32:06,540 --> 00:32:07,980 "after I had riddled them." 508 00:32:07,980 --> 00:32:10,820 "Appalling scenes at work of rescue." 509 00:32:10,820 --> 00:32:15,700 All sorts of individually headlined stories. Indescribable scenes. 510 00:32:17,420 --> 00:32:20,580 And in these papers is one of the first suggestions 511 00:32:20,580 --> 00:32:23,900 that Tinsley and Meakin were perhaps not solely responsible 512 00:32:23,900 --> 00:32:25,940 for the disaster at Quintinshill. 513 00:32:25,940 --> 00:32:29,300 This is the Dumfries and Galloway Standard, here. 514 00:32:29,300 --> 00:32:31,380 This was our, one of our rival papers 515 00:32:31,380 --> 00:32:34,100 when I worked at the Annandale Observer. 516 00:32:34,100 --> 00:32:37,740 What's priceless in here is a letter that been sent to the paper 517 00:32:37,740 --> 00:32:41,020 by a railwayman, someone who is experienced in the industry 518 00:32:41,020 --> 00:32:44,820 and he's pointing the finger at the Caledonian company, 519 00:32:44,820 --> 00:32:47,380 saying that there are rules and regulations, 520 00:32:47,380 --> 00:32:49,820 but they are not necessarily for people's safety. 521 00:32:49,820 --> 00:32:52,060 They are so that the company can go through 522 00:32:52,060 --> 00:32:54,420 a kind of a hand-washing of responsibility. 523 00:32:54,420 --> 00:32:56,540 There's an excellent quote in here. 524 00:32:56,540 --> 00:32:58,580 "If they are broken and nothing happens, 525 00:32:58,580 --> 00:33:01,980 "the company is conveniently and consistently blind." 526 00:33:01,980 --> 00:33:05,260 And then, in case of an accident, the company turns round and says, 527 00:33:05,260 --> 00:33:06,940 "Our regulations are there 528 00:33:06,940 --> 00:33:09,580 "and we did not know that they were not being carried out." 529 00:33:09,580 --> 00:33:12,020 So you get a real sense that someone on the inside 530 00:33:12,020 --> 00:33:15,180 thinks that the company has to take some of the blame. 531 00:33:16,300 --> 00:33:21,420 So, was the company negligent in not enforcing its own rules? 532 00:33:21,420 --> 00:33:24,060 It seems they probably were. 533 00:33:24,060 --> 00:33:28,420 The evidence of Alexander Thorburn, Tinsley's supervisor and neighbour, 534 00:33:28,420 --> 00:33:32,140 implied that he knew about Tinsley's late shift change arrangement. 535 00:33:32,140 --> 00:33:34,020 He's inconsistent in his evidence 536 00:33:34,020 --> 00:33:38,620 about whether he was around at the time that the local leaves 537 00:33:38,620 --> 00:33:42,660 with Tinsley on board to take him up to Quintinshill. 538 00:33:42,660 --> 00:33:46,500 But if you look at his evidence overall, 539 00:33:46,500 --> 00:33:51,340 it is unimaginable that he didn't know what was happening. 540 00:33:51,340 --> 00:33:54,220 I mean, this is a very small railway community. 541 00:33:54,220 --> 00:33:58,700 The number of railway employees is not great. 542 00:33:58,700 --> 00:34:02,340 It's basically the station staff at Gretna plus a few signalmen, 543 00:34:02,340 --> 00:34:06,420 and his responsibility is to make sure everything operates properly. 544 00:34:06,420 --> 00:34:09,860 Therefore, the idea that he would never have heard about this, 545 00:34:09,860 --> 00:34:11,300 I think, is absurd. 546 00:34:12,700 --> 00:34:15,340 The suspicion is that some of the other rules 547 00:34:15,340 --> 00:34:17,220 were also regularly flouted - 548 00:34:17,220 --> 00:34:18,380 and the company knew. 549 00:34:20,420 --> 00:34:23,140 I think what we find in Quintinshill, 550 00:34:23,140 --> 00:34:25,820 in the absence of further evidence, 551 00:34:25,820 --> 00:34:29,580 is what you'd expect any management to do in that situation, 552 00:34:29,580 --> 00:34:34,300 which is that senior managers in the Caledonian 553 00:34:34,300 --> 00:34:38,820 had a good idea that not every shift change in every signal box occurred 554 00:34:38,820 --> 00:34:40,420 when it should have done. 555 00:34:40,420 --> 00:34:43,060 That not every stationmaster 556 00:34:43,060 --> 00:34:45,300 was punctilious in making sure 557 00:34:45,300 --> 00:34:47,420 that the people under their jurisdiction 558 00:34:47,420 --> 00:34:50,100 stuck by the rule book all the time. 559 00:34:50,100 --> 00:34:52,300 The most obvious rule broken by Meakin 560 00:34:52,300 --> 00:34:54,140 was not using the lever collar 561 00:34:54,140 --> 00:34:56,980 that would have prevented Tinsley from signalling 562 00:34:56,980 --> 00:34:58,860 the troop train to come through. 563 00:34:58,860 --> 00:35:01,500 The lever collar is just a piece of metal 564 00:35:01,500 --> 00:35:05,220 you put over the signal lever to prevent it being pulled. 565 00:35:05,220 --> 00:35:07,340 They are available at Quintinshill 566 00:35:07,340 --> 00:35:09,620 and it's clear they're not used. 567 00:35:09,620 --> 00:35:12,420 It is also clear they very rarely were used. 568 00:35:12,420 --> 00:35:14,700 It's perhaps worth noting that the Midland Railway 569 00:35:14,700 --> 00:35:19,900 didn't provide them because it would make the signalmen careless. 570 00:35:19,900 --> 00:35:22,580 It was not unusual for signalmen not to use collars. 571 00:35:22,580 --> 00:35:26,220 Prior to 1910 the railway company actually actively discouraged 572 00:35:26,220 --> 00:35:27,940 signalmen from using these. 573 00:35:27,940 --> 00:35:31,500 They were considered almost namby-pamby instruments. 574 00:35:31,500 --> 00:35:34,500 The signalman's a professional. He should know where his trains are. 575 00:35:34,500 --> 00:35:37,420 Why does he need all these fangled modern devices? 576 00:35:37,420 --> 00:35:43,140 That attitude continued throughout the railway even post-1910 577 00:35:43,140 --> 00:35:44,700 but signalman like Meakin, 578 00:35:44,700 --> 00:35:47,020 who had years of experience, 579 00:35:47,020 --> 00:35:48,980 were not used to using them, and the railway, 580 00:35:48,980 --> 00:35:52,260 most importantly, did not police the use of collars. 581 00:36:01,860 --> 00:36:04,820 The make-up of the train that carried the troops 582 00:36:04,820 --> 00:36:07,140 was also a major feature of the crash. 583 00:36:11,820 --> 00:36:15,220 And here in these sidings at Ruddington, near Nottingham, 584 00:36:15,220 --> 00:36:18,980 it's possible to get a rare glimpse of what the coaches looked like. 585 00:36:20,260 --> 00:36:23,300 All of the carriages that were actually involved in the crash 586 00:36:23,300 --> 00:36:24,500 are long gone, 587 00:36:24,500 --> 00:36:27,740 but in a shed over here there's one exactly like the rolling stock 588 00:36:27,740 --> 00:36:29,900 of the Great Central Railway that the government 589 00:36:29,900 --> 00:36:31,780 and the Caledonian Railway Company 590 00:36:31,780 --> 00:36:34,300 had organised for the movement of the troops. 591 00:36:37,940 --> 00:36:41,100 Pat Sumner is one of many enthusiasts here 592 00:36:41,100 --> 00:36:43,820 who has restored this Central Railway carriage 593 00:36:43,820 --> 00:36:45,340 to its original condition. 594 00:36:49,740 --> 00:36:52,780 How many soldiers would have sat in one of these compartments? 595 00:36:52,780 --> 00:36:56,740 They are built for six a side. Right. 596 00:36:56,740 --> 00:36:58,180 So as many as a dozen... 597 00:36:58,180 --> 00:37:00,860 A dozen people could sit in here. Right. 598 00:37:02,940 --> 00:37:06,220 When you imagine the events of Quintinshill, 599 00:37:06,220 --> 00:37:10,100 what are the likely consequences of a compartment or a carriage 600 00:37:10,100 --> 00:37:13,620 built like this experiencing a high-speed collision? 601 00:37:15,260 --> 00:37:18,260 Well, this might look fairly solid on the top 602 00:37:18,260 --> 00:37:20,300 but in the collision, 603 00:37:20,300 --> 00:37:24,660 the stresses would collapse the bodywork 604 00:37:24,660 --> 00:37:26,940 and of course the whole train would telescope, 605 00:37:26,940 --> 00:37:29,180 depending on the severity of the impact. 606 00:37:29,180 --> 00:37:31,100 And so the men are sitting here knee-to-knee 607 00:37:31,100 --> 00:37:33,580 and they are just going to be crushed together. 608 00:37:33,580 --> 00:37:36,420 Crushed and they would be thrown. 609 00:37:36,420 --> 00:37:39,500 And up here, this goldfish bowl up here, is that lighting? 610 00:37:39,500 --> 00:37:44,300 That would have been the gas lighting for the coach. Yes. 611 00:37:44,300 --> 00:37:47,460 Fed from tanks on the underside of the vehicle. 612 00:37:47,460 --> 00:37:49,860 So all of the ingredients are there, aren't they? 613 00:37:49,860 --> 00:37:52,940 The compartments are made of wood, which tends to collapse on impact. 614 00:37:52,940 --> 00:37:55,820 They are packed with men who are going to get jumbled 615 00:37:55,820 --> 00:37:57,420 and thrown together. 616 00:37:57,420 --> 00:37:59,860 Above their heads is a naked flame. 617 00:37:59,860 --> 00:38:02,740 Below our feet are canisters of gas fuel. 618 00:38:02,740 --> 00:38:04,660 Yes. Yes, I'm afraid so. 619 00:38:04,660 --> 00:38:07,100 It's an accident waiting to happen. 620 00:38:07,100 --> 00:38:10,260 The crashworthiness of these coaches was abysmal. 621 00:38:10,260 --> 00:38:12,860 They were effectively reduced to timber. 622 00:38:12,860 --> 00:38:14,740 There were gas cylinders underneath. 623 00:38:14,740 --> 00:38:18,660 The gas cylinders exploded and this is what led to the massive, 624 00:38:18,660 --> 00:38:20,940 horrific casualties at Quintinshill. 625 00:38:20,940 --> 00:38:24,620 Had the coaches been more modern, the normal standard for 1915, 626 00:38:24,620 --> 00:38:26,340 yes, there would have been casualties. 627 00:38:26,340 --> 00:38:29,260 Yes, there probably would have been a fire too, but it wouldn't have 628 00:38:29,260 --> 00:38:33,460 been anything as bad as the horrific nature that we saw that morning. 629 00:38:35,740 --> 00:38:40,860 Ah, so this big black cylinder here is the gas? Yes, there's two of them 630 00:38:40,860 --> 00:38:45,060 and they would be filled with gas at the terminal station 631 00:38:45,060 --> 00:38:47,460 or in the carriage sidings. 632 00:38:47,460 --> 00:38:52,700 It does seem a bit dangerous to have a wooden train 633 00:38:52,700 --> 00:38:56,300 with gas bolted on to its underside. 634 00:38:56,300 --> 00:38:58,300 Was this regarded as safe? 635 00:38:58,300 --> 00:39:01,660 Well, that was the technology that was available at the time. 636 00:39:01,660 --> 00:39:03,860 You are talking about Victorian times, of course. 637 00:39:03,860 --> 00:39:07,180 Everywhere you look, there is something flammable. Uh-huh. 638 00:39:07,180 --> 00:39:12,060 But, by 1915, there were already steel-built carriages 639 00:39:12,060 --> 00:39:13,820 lit by electricity. 640 00:39:15,940 --> 00:39:19,260 And, crucially, the continuing use of gas lighting 641 00:39:19,260 --> 00:39:22,020 had also been condemned as highly dangerous 642 00:39:22,020 --> 00:39:24,460 in two previous accident enquiries. 643 00:39:26,300 --> 00:39:29,660 It's arguable, too, that even in a time of war, 644 00:39:29,660 --> 00:39:31,540 when rolling stock was in short supply, 645 00:39:31,540 --> 00:39:34,740 these dangerous coaches could have been run more safely. 646 00:39:36,180 --> 00:39:38,780 Had they only been travelling at a much lower speed, 647 00:39:38,780 --> 00:39:40,260 20 or 30mph, 648 00:39:40,260 --> 00:39:43,420 that would have greatly lessened the possibility of impact 649 00:39:43,420 --> 00:39:46,020 and, no doubt, a train travelling at that speed, 650 00:39:46,020 --> 00:39:47,980 antiquated though it was, 651 00:39:47,980 --> 00:39:50,060 probably would've avoided catastrophe. 652 00:39:53,420 --> 00:39:56,580 The Board of Trade enquiry was only the first of many. 653 00:39:56,580 --> 00:40:00,740 Further inquests and trials were held in both Scotland and England. 654 00:40:05,420 --> 00:40:07,980 One month after the accident, an inquest was held 655 00:40:07,980 --> 00:40:12,020 in Carlisle for the 27 men that died in the hospital there. 656 00:40:12,020 --> 00:40:14,060 The coroner, Thomas Slack Strong, 657 00:40:14,060 --> 00:40:17,780 paid little heed to the fact that the gaslit wooden carriages 658 00:40:17,780 --> 00:40:21,100 would have played a major part in the deaths of so many. 659 00:40:22,460 --> 00:40:24,380 The purpose of the coroner's inquest 660 00:40:24,380 --> 00:40:29,380 is to identify the causes of the death 661 00:40:29,380 --> 00:40:33,220 and to essentially determine if it was unlawful or not, 662 00:40:33,220 --> 00:40:35,180 but it's not a finding of guilt. 663 00:40:35,180 --> 00:40:38,780 However, Strong relied heavily on the railway company for evidence, 664 00:40:38,780 --> 00:40:42,700 and they indicated quite clearly who had broken their rules. 665 00:40:42,700 --> 00:40:45,820 These two chaps, George Meakin and James Tinsley, 666 00:40:45,820 --> 00:40:47,700 had caused this accident. 667 00:40:47,700 --> 00:40:51,380 It was made clear to everybody in the country that they had 668 00:40:51,380 --> 00:40:54,020 caused the accident, they were to blame. 669 00:40:55,100 --> 00:40:58,260 It was as if Strong was unwilling to explore factors 670 00:40:58,260 --> 00:41:00,460 contributing to the high death toll 671 00:41:00,460 --> 00:41:03,420 unless they could be ascribed to the signalmen. 672 00:41:03,420 --> 00:41:05,060 I suspect one of the difficulties 673 00:41:05,060 --> 00:41:07,260 for the inquest was actually 674 00:41:07,260 --> 00:41:09,300 working out what the purpose of the inquest was, 675 00:41:09,300 --> 00:41:11,140 given that this was a case in which 676 00:41:11,140 --> 00:41:14,140 there was going to be a subsequent criminal prosecution. 677 00:41:14,140 --> 00:41:18,420 Nowadays we would expect an inquest or a fatal-accident enquiry 678 00:41:18,420 --> 00:41:22,020 to look at all the facts, not just the criminal negligence, 679 00:41:22,020 --> 00:41:24,940 if there was criminal negligence on the part of the people 680 00:41:24,940 --> 00:41:27,580 who caused the accident, but also what measures, 681 00:41:27,580 --> 00:41:30,460 perhaps more importantly, could be taken to ensure 682 00:41:30,460 --> 00:41:34,100 that if this happens again the consequences aren't as severe. 683 00:41:34,100 --> 00:41:38,380 But in 1915 the verdict of the inquest was straightforward. 684 00:41:38,380 --> 00:41:39,900 Manslaughter. 685 00:41:44,260 --> 00:41:47,700 The signalmen were subsequently charged with breach of duty 686 00:41:47,700 --> 00:41:49,740 and the killing of five of the victims. 687 00:41:51,740 --> 00:41:54,260 It was here, in Edinburgh's High Court, 688 00:41:54,260 --> 00:41:56,220 that the men were put on trial. 689 00:41:56,220 --> 00:42:00,140 It was a big case and it was being held only a mile or so from Leith, 690 00:42:00,140 --> 00:42:02,740 where most of the soldiers had been recruited. 691 00:42:03,860 --> 00:42:06,620 The Lord Advocate himself led the prosecution, 692 00:42:06,620 --> 00:42:09,300 and he called the Caledonian Railway officials 693 00:42:09,300 --> 00:42:11,380 to provide almost all the evidence. 694 00:42:11,380 --> 00:42:15,780 It is surprising that the bulk of the prosecution witnesses 695 00:42:15,780 --> 00:42:19,980 were coming from the Caledonian Railway Company. Er... 696 00:42:19,980 --> 00:42:23,140 The kind of witnesses we'd be looking at calling today 697 00:42:23,140 --> 00:42:24,900 would be rail safety experts 698 00:42:24,900 --> 00:42:28,620 who could come in and talk about whether the procedures adopted 699 00:42:28,620 --> 00:42:33,060 by the company were state-of-the-art procedures or not, and so on. 700 00:42:34,620 --> 00:42:38,020 No independent expert witnesses were called, however, 701 00:42:38,020 --> 00:42:41,220 either by the prosecution or by the defence, 702 00:42:41,220 --> 00:42:43,380 and everyone who gave evidence at the trial, 703 00:42:43,380 --> 00:42:46,740 with the exception of the policeman who arrested Tinsley, 704 00:42:46,740 --> 00:42:48,660 were on the Caledonian payroll. 705 00:42:48,660 --> 00:42:51,700 It's a curious case, because, erm... 706 00:42:52,940 --> 00:42:57,660 The strong sense you get is that the facts were not being contested, 707 00:42:57,660 --> 00:43:00,020 that by the time the trial took place 708 00:43:00,020 --> 00:43:04,260 a narrative had clearly been established that, er, 709 00:43:04,260 --> 00:43:08,620 the signalmen had been responsible for the crash, 710 00:43:08,620 --> 00:43:12,580 and there was no attempt to open up questions 711 00:43:12,580 --> 00:43:17,900 of whether the company was at fault in the use of the gas cylinders 712 00:43:17,900 --> 00:43:21,780 and the wooden design of the carriages or suchlike. 713 00:43:21,780 --> 00:43:25,580 So in some sense it's surprising to us that these kinds of issues, 714 00:43:25,580 --> 00:43:31,300 which we might expect to be relevant issues, weren't addressed at all. 715 00:43:31,300 --> 00:43:34,220 So why did the barrister defending the men, 716 00:43:34,220 --> 00:43:37,820 James Condie Stewart Sandeman, a leading defence advocate, 717 00:43:37,820 --> 00:43:40,580 not call on any independent witnesses 718 00:43:40,580 --> 00:43:43,860 or mount an effective defence? 719 00:43:43,860 --> 00:43:50,580 It's likely that the directors of the Caledonian Railway Company, 720 00:43:50,580 --> 00:43:56,580 the members of the Bar, of the legal profession, of the... 721 00:43:56,580 --> 00:43:59,500 in the senior ranks of the police forces, 722 00:43:59,500 --> 00:44:01,860 were of similar social classes. 723 00:44:01,860 --> 00:44:04,620 The legal profession at the time was very small. 724 00:44:04,620 --> 00:44:07,740 So, for example, if Sandeman had tried to challenge 725 00:44:07,740 --> 00:44:11,140 the way that the initial investigation had been done, 726 00:44:11,140 --> 00:44:14,380 these are the kind of claims that not only would have been 727 00:44:14,380 --> 00:44:19,900 completely alien to him but would have damaged, er, his... 728 00:44:19,900 --> 00:44:23,900 fundamentally damaged his career immediately. 729 00:44:23,900 --> 00:44:28,780 And so it's not surprising that these kind of issues weren't raised. 730 00:44:28,780 --> 00:44:31,700 I think those men would probably have been convicted 731 00:44:31,700 --> 00:44:34,900 even if they'd had a, you know, very persuasive barrister 732 00:44:34,900 --> 00:44:36,060 or whatever it was, 733 00:44:36,060 --> 00:44:40,340 but nevertheless, the poor did not get the same justice as the rich. 734 00:44:40,340 --> 00:44:43,660 Tinsley and Meakin were found guilty and imprisoned. 735 00:44:43,660 --> 00:44:46,580 Meakin got 18 months but Tinsley was sentenced 736 00:44:46,580 --> 00:44:49,700 to three years of hard labour in Peterhead Jail, 737 00:44:49,700 --> 00:44:51,500 breaking rocks in a quarry. 738 00:44:53,380 --> 00:44:59,060 The fact that he was portrayed as a criminal is, erm, I think, 739 00:44:59,060 --> 00:45:03,860 a very unkind portrayal of this man. He was nothing of the sort. 740 00:45:03,860 --> 00:45:06,100 Something went wrong that morning 741 00:45:06,100 --> 00:45:08,540 that was to have catastrophic effects. 742 00:45:12,260 --> 00:45:16,740 According to the norms of 1915, justice had been served. 743 00:45:16,740 --> 00:45:19,620 Meakin and Tinsley were behind bars. 744 00:45:19,620 --> 00:45:22,460 But were the men just scapegoats? 745 00:45:22,460 --> 00:45:24,340 If one is looking for blame 746 00:45:24,340 --> 00:45:27,580 then one tends not to get to the truth so easily. 747 00:45:28,700 --> 00:45:32,020 Did the focus on blaming the men in the signal box 748 00:45:32,020 --> 00:45:36,300 blind everyone to the wider responsibility for the accident? 749 00:45:36,300 --> 00:45:39,060 If this sort of incident had happened today 750 00:45:39,060 --> 00:45:42,180 then there'd have been a much greater challenge of... 751 00:45:42,180 --> 00:45:44,940 to the procedures of the company. 752 00:45:44,940 --> 00:45:47,980 But at that time, the apparent single-minded pursuit 753 00:45:47,980 --> 00:45:51,100 of the railwaymen meant very little thought was given 754 00:45:51,100 --> 00:45:52,860 to the actual causes of death. 755 00:45:56,620 --> 00:46:01,820 The use of old gaslit wooden rolling stock, a practice already condemned, 756 00:46:01,820 --> 00:46:04,860 clearly caused a very significant number of deaths. 757 00:46:07,900 --> 00:46:12,060 The condition of the carriages is poor and they are gaslit, 758 00:46:12,060 --> 00:46:15,900 which in the end contributes to something much worse than 759 00:46:15,900 --> 00:46:19,580 would have been the case even from a double collision. 760 00:46:19,580 --> 00:46:22,420 There was a strong suggestion that the company's rules 761 00:46:22,420 --> 00:46:25,100 were not adequately enforced or supervised. 762 00:46:26,940 --> 00:46:30,660 There was virtually no supervisory regime in existence 763 00:46:30,660 --> 00:46:34,660 on the southern district of the Caledonian Railway at that time. 764 00:46:34,660 --> 00:46:38,100 The railway company was determined to carry on business as usual, 765 00:46:38,100 --> 00:46:39,620 despite the war. 766 00:46:39,620 --> 00:46:43,260 There was a sense amongst businesses, including the railways, 767 00:46:43,260 --> 00:46:46,940 that things must continue. You know, we must soldier on. 768 00:46:46,940 --> 00:46:50,220 We mustn't allow this inconvenience of the First World War 769 00:46:50,220 --> 00:46:53,980 to actually affect what is otherwise a very profitable business. 770 00:46:53,980 --> 00:46:56,060 Wartime pressure on the rail system, 771 00:46:56,060 --> 00:46:58,740 causing the passing loops to be used as sidings, 772 00:46:58,740 --> 00:47:01,940 left Meakin with little choice of what to do with the local train 773 00:47:01,940 --> 00:47:03,940 but use the most risky option. 774 00:47:05,260 --> 00:47:07,620 That, essentially, was the cause 775 00:47:07,620 --> 00:47:10,940 of what led to the disaster at Quintinshill. 776 00:47:10,940 --> 00:47:13,740 It was too many trains piled into a small area 777 00:47:13,740 --> 00:47:15,820 with simply nowhere to put them, 778 00:47:15,820 --> 00:47:19,340 and huge pressure put on the signalmen to find a solution. 779 00:47:21,460 --> 00:47:23,820 And the late arrival of the fire brigade, 780 00:47:23,820 --> 00:47:26,500 taking over three hours to reach the crash site. 781 00:47:28,580 --> 00:47:31,820 All these were likely factors contributing to the crash 782 00:47:31,820 --> 00:47:34,500 and the appalling death toll. 783 00:47:34,500 --> 00:47:37,340 Few were brought up or pursued in court. 784 00:47:38,900 --> 00:47:43,580 Today we would spend probably more time investigating what, er... 785 00:47:43,580 --> 00:47:47,420 the culture they worked in, what the, erm... 786 00:47:47,420 --> 00:47:50,900 whether there were any particular circumstances 787 00:47:50,900 --> 00:47:53,500 associated with those individuals 788 00:47:53,500 --> 00:47:58,220 that might have led to them being distracted on the day. 789 00:47:58,220 --> 00:48:01,860 Tinsley's defence throughout was that he simply forgot 790 00:48:01,860 --> 00:48:04,300 that the local train was on the line. 791 00:48:04,300 --> 00:48:08,740 This has led some to speculate about his state of mind that day. 792 00:48:10,020 --> 00:48:13,420 There's obviously the possibility that he was simply distracted. 793 00:48:13,420 --> 00:48:16,380 It's a remarkable lapse of attention in that case, erm, 794 00:48:16,380 --> 00:48:18,980 to forget that the train that you've just got off 795 00:48:18,980 --> 00:48:21,300 is standing in the way of the troop train. 796 00:48:21,300 --> 00:48:25,260 The recent literature makes a significant suggestion, 797 00:48:25,260 --> 00:48:28,980 and this relates to the state of Tinsley's health, 798 00:48:28,980 --> 00:48:32,540 that there's a suggestion that he suffered from epilepsy 799 00:48:32,540 --> 00:48:37,100 and that there were serious issues about him getting there on time 800 00:48:37,100 --> 00:48:40,580 and that basically the whole rhythm was to accommodate him, 801 00:48:40,580 --> 00:48:44,500 and that possibly on the disastrous morning 802 00:48:44,500 --> 00:48:48,180 he was in fact suffering from the aftermaths of a fit. 803 00:48:48,180 --> 00:48:50,700 Newspapers reporting the case 804 00:48:50,700 --> 00:48:53,580 describe Tinsley as suffering from fits 805 00:48:53,580 --> 00:48:56,540 and when he's been taken initially to the Sheriff's Court 806 00:48:56,540 --> 00:48:59,580 for his first court appearance, 807 00:48:59,580 --> 00:49:03,460 and then there was this strange, oblique reference at the trial, 808 00:49:03,460 --> 00:49:08,300 by the two men's advocate, Condie Sandeman, 809 00:49:08,300 --> 00:49:10,540 who says in his summing-up, 810 00:49:10,540 --> 00:49:13,980 "It would not have been culpable homicide, would it, 811 00:49:13,980 --> 00:49:18,860 "if he" - Tinsley - "had fallen down in an epileptic fit?" 812 00:49:18,860 --> 00:49:21,540 Now, why does he say that? 813 00:49:21,540 --> 00:49:25,140 There'd been no reference to epilepsy in the court case before. 814 00:49:25,140 --> 00:49:27,980 But he suddenly throws that into the mix. 815 00:49:27,980 --> 00:49:31,020 These short mentions of epilepsy and fits 816 00:49:31,020 --> 00:49:35,180 instigated a search by authors Jack Richards and Adrian Searle 817 00:49:35,180 --> 00:49:38,820 for more clues that might explain Tinsley's forgetfulness. 818 00:49:38,820 --> 00:49:45,060 There is one specific reference held in the Scottish National Archives. 819 00:49:45,060 --> 00:49:49,580 It is in the form of a scribbled note. 820 00:49:49,580 --> 00:49:51,020 On that scribbled note, 821 00:49:51,020 --> 00:49:54,620 which was written by the police in Dumfries, 822 00:49:54,620 --> 00:50:00,340 it specifically says that when the police go to arrest James Tinsley 823 00:50:00,340 --> 00:50:05,860 they are told by his GP that they cannot move him at that stage 824 00:50:05,860 --> 00:50:09,420 because his brain may be affected. 825 00:50:09,420 --> 00:50:14,020 He has been suffering from epileptic fits. 826 00:50:14,020 --> 00:50:20,100 If it is true that he had a grand mal - big fit - 827 00:50:20,100 --> 00:50:23,220 following the accident, erm, 828 00:50:23,220 --> 00:50:25,860 then that would be strong support for the possibility 829 00:50:25,860 --> 00:50:28,460 of transient epileptic amnesia, 830 00:50:28,460 --> 00:50:33,540 accounting for his memory loss for the local train being on the track. 831 00:50:35,140 --> 00:50:39,380 It is clear that, were he being tried now, 832 00:50:39,380 --> 00:50:42,580 much more effort would have gone into establishing 833 00:50:42,580 --> 00:50:47,940 whether or not epilepsy could account for...for what happened. 834 00:50:49,140 --> 00:50:52,540 So why does it appear that the Quintinshill accident 835 00:50:52,540 --> 00:50:54,500 was not looked into in more detail, 836 00:50:54,500 --> 00:50:56,820 that the authorities seemed determined 837 00:50:56,820 --> 00:50:58,460 to lock up the railway workers 838 00:50:58,460 --> 00:51:02,460 and not examine the many other causes of the disaster? 839 00:51:02,460 --> 00:51:04,900 Adrian Searle has an astonishing theory. 840 00:51:06,100 --> 00:51:08,340 We believe that a deal had been struck 841 00:51:08,340 --> 00:51:11,420 and it was a deal that really suited everybody. 842 00:51:11,420 --> 00:51:15,460 The deal was, we think, that Meakin and Tinsley 843 00:51:15,460 --> 00:51:20,540 would agree to take the blame, the entire blame, as it were. 844 00:51:20,540 --> 00:51:25,940 They would put up a defence, erm, mitigation, you might call it, 845 00:51:25,940 --> 00:51:28,540 but they would take the whole rap for this. 846 00:51:30,380 --> 00:51:35,900 In exchange, they would be "looked after" by the Caledonian Railway 847 00:51:35,900 --> 00:51:42,500 after the...the legal procedure had taken its course. 848 00:51:44,180 --> 00:51:50,340 This would explain why the Caledonian Railway re-employed both men 849 00:51:50,340 --> 00:51:52,380 after they came out of prison. 850 00:51:56,460 --> 00:51:59,620 It's an attractive theory, as everyone seemed to gain. 851 00:52:01,460 --> 00:52:04,220 Meakin and Tinsley would have jobs to go back to, 852 00:52:04,220 --> 00:52:08,340 despite being convicted killers - although not as signalmen. 853 00:52:09,460 --> 00:52:12,620 The government would avoid all blame, even though 854 00:52:12,620 --> 00:52:15,220 they were in charge of the railways. 855 00:52:15,220 --> 00:52:18,540 And the company would have no-one looking at the way 856 00:52:18,540 --> 00:52:20,180 they ran their business. 857 00:52:20,180 --> 00:52:22,980 The only losers would be the travelling public. 858 00:52:26,540 --> 00:52:29,700 By the end of 1915 it seemed the affair was over. 859 00:52:30,860 --> 00:52:34,860 But some were starting to question the convictions of the signalmen, 860 00:52:34,860 --> 00:52:37,620 especially the harsh treatment of Tinsley. 861 00:52:37,620 --> 00:52:42,260 These were men badly paid, often with very limited technology, 862 00:52:42,260 --> 00:52:45,180 who sometimes have to take difficult decisions, 863 00:52:45,180 --> 00:52:47,100 and, if the decisions go wrong, 864 00:52:47,100 --> 00:52:49,980 on a good day it will simply hold up the traffic, 865 00:52:49,980 --> 00:52:52,740 on a bad day it will be something much worse. 866 00:52:52,740 --> 00:52:55,860 Growing support for the union movement meant more people 867 00:52:55,860 --> 00:52:59,700 started to see the Quintinshill disaster in a different light, 868 00:52:59,700 --> 00:53:03,460 and the case of Meakin and Tinsley as a political one. 869 00:53:03,460 --> 00:53:05,900 It's very easy to put yourselves 870 00:53:05,900 --> 00:53:09,220 in the shoes of the Quintinshill signalmen. 871 00:53:09,220 --> 00:53:11,500 There but for the grace of God go I. 872 00:53:11,500 --> 00:53:13,340 That anyone can make a mistake, 873 00:53:13,340 --> 00:53:16,260 anyone could find themselves in the middle of a disaster, 874 00:53:16,260 --> 00:53:19,100 and then you would want sympathy from your workmates 875 00:53:19,100 --> 00:53:23,020 and you would also want the support of your union. 876 00:53:23,020 --> 00:53:25,860 It's not necessarily a... a political agenda, 877 00:53:25,860 --> 00:53:28,900 it's a sort of visceral feeling of sympathy. 878 00:53:30,740 --> 00:53:35,420 As the war progressed, news of military disasters like Gallipoli 879 00:53:35,420 --> 00:53:39,020 and on the Western Front were filtering through to the nation. 880 00:53:39,020 --> 00:53:41,500 Those in charge were now seen as fallible. 881 00:53:41,500 --> 00:53:43,180 Revolution was in the air, 882 00:53:43,180 --> 00:53:46,020 and in Britain the government was under pressure. 883 00:53:47,060 --> 00:53:49,620 They were in trouble in Ireland, of course, 884 00:53:49,620 --> 00:53:52,260 because you had these two split communities, 885 00:53:52,260 --> 00:53:55,820 and they were in trouble at home with the suffragettes, 886 00:53:55,820 --> 00:53:58,380 the demand not only for votes for women 887 00:53:58,380 --> 00:54:02,220 but for the number of men who were also excluded from the franchise. 888 00:54:02,220 --> 00:54:06,700 And of course there was also industrial disputes. 889 00:54:06,700 --> 00:54:08,540 Jimmy Thomas, 890 00:54:08,540 --> 00:54:11,380 a leading negotiator for the National Union of Railwaymen, 891 00:54:11,380 --> 00:54:15,220 took up the case of Meakin and Tinsley for his own purposes. 892 00:54:15,220 --> 00:54:18,260 Jimmy was a fixer. He was a negotiator. 893 00:54:18,260 --> 00:54:19,940 He would come out with deals. 894 00:54:19,940 --> 00:54:23,460 And everything he did in 1915 in the aftermath of Quintinshill 895 00:54:23,460 --> 00:54:27,900 I think is determined by the idea that he will do the best he can 896 00:54:27,900 --> 00:54:33,220 for his members within what's actually a very difficult situation. 897 00:54:35,540 --> 00:54:39,420 The Quintinshill signalmen were now pawns in a much bigger game. 898 00:54:39,420 --> 00:54:42,660 A power struggle was developing between the established order 899 00:54:42,660 --> 00:54:46,900 of government and an increasingly muscular union movement. 900 00:54:51,260 --> 00:54:55,580 The war is at an appalling stage 901 00:54:55,580 --> 00:54:59,620 and the last thing that any British government needs 902 00:54:59,620 --> 00:55:02,540 in the autumn of 1916 is a rail strike. 903 00:55:02,540 --> 00:55:06,220 Thomas certainly doesn't expect that there'll be a rail strike, 904 00:55:06,220 --> 00:55:10,980 but he is, as part of his negotiating ploy, 905 00:55:10,980 --> 00:55:15,020 presenting the genie in the bottle and saying to the government, 906 00:55:15,020 --> 00:55:19,020 either you cut a deal about the release of these chaps from prison 907 00:55:19,020 --> 00:55:21,900 or the genie will get out of the bottle 908 00:55:21,900 --> 00:55:26,940 and neither you nor I will be able to control the consequences. 909 00:55:26,940 --> 00:55:29,420 Thomas had picked his moment well. 910 00:55:29,420 --> 00:55:34,420 On 5 December 1916, Prime Minister Asquith was ousted. 911 00:55:34,420 --> 00:55:37,780 Ten days later Meakin and Tinsley were also freed. 912 00:55:45,540 --> 00:55:48,740 At the time of the accident it was in no-one's interest 913 00:55:48,740 --> 00:55:51,540 to expose what had happened at Quintinshill, 914 00:55:51,540 --> 00:55:56,100 not the government, not the railway company and not the men involved. 915 00:55:56,100 --> 00:55:59,820 And dreadful casualty figures from wartime battles like the Somme 916 00:55:59,820 --> 00:56:02,540 soon overshadowed those at Quintinshill. 917 00:56:04,380 --> 00:56:08,140 Since then, the story has remained forgotten by almost all. 918 00:56:09,220 --> 00:56:11,220 But not the rail industry, 919 00:56:11,220 --> 00:56:14,820 not the Royal Scots and not the people of Leith. 920 00:56:17,260 --> 00:56:21,780 Nowhere did we lose 216 soldiers 921 00:56:21,780 --> 00:56:26,380 within...100 miles of their home, 922 00:56:26,380 --> 00:56:33,020 having never got to the war they had so valiantly set out to take part in. 923 00:56:34,260 --> 00:56:37,940 And that is something which we will always remember. 924 00:56:46,380 --> 00:56:50,620 Even here, in the Scottish National War Memorial in Edinburgh, 925 00:56:50,620 --> 00:56:54,540 where the name of every soldier who died during the war is recorded, 926 00:56:54,540 --> 00:56:58,780 there is no sense of how the men of the 1/7th Royal Scots 927 00:56:58,780 --> 00:57:01,660 died on 22 May 1915. 928 00:57:01,660 --> 00:57:05,900 However, there is a curious comment by each entry. 929 00:57:07,260 --> 00:57:13,980 And there's two brothers. James Sime and Robert Sime. 930 00:57:13,980 --> 00:57:17,020 Both of them "Leith, Died Home." 931 00:57:20,060 --> 00:57:23,100 And there's one, "John Cumming, Leith." 932 00:57:28,340 --> 00:57:30,300 "Died Home." 933 00:57:34,460 --> 00:57:38,380 And there's another one. "Arthur B Colville." 934 00:57:40,380 --> 00:57:42,380 "Levenhall, Musselburgh." 935 00:57:46,460 --> 00:57:48,500 "Died Home." 936 00:57:53,980 --> 00:57:57,580 Officially, that "Died Home" explanation 937 00:57:57,580 --> 00:58:00,860 indicates that the soldier was killed on home territory 938 00:58:00,860 --> 00:58:04,340 rather than while fighting on a foreign field. 939 00:58:04,340 --> 00:58:06,420 But Quintinshill wasn't just 940 00:58:06,420 --> 00:58:09,220 Britain's worst ever railway accident, 941 00:58:09,220 --> 00:58:13,420 it was also a truly horrific disaster. 942 00:58:13,420 --> 00:58:17,580 So perhaps it's no bad thing that "Died Home" 943 00:58:17,580 --> 00:58:21,420 conceals the reality of what happened there.