Fire has always been a potential danger on steam-driven railways. Press reports dating from as early as 1840 illustrate the variety of causes, the resulting loss of life and injuries, and the damage to property and rolling stock. All forms of railway property were in danger of fire, especially where timber was the principal building material: passenger stations, warehouses, goods sheds, signal boxes, even viaducts and bridges.
There was consternation when grassland, crops and woodland were burned to the ground owing to the discharge of hot cinders and sparks from the funnels of locomotives. Consternation was also felt by travellers whose journey by train was afflicted by burnt baggage and clothing.
Gas-lit carriages were an improvement on oil lamps. The use of gas, however, was a step into the unknown: all the advantages of gas over oil lamps and daylight were to be compromised in the decades ahead. Compressed gas was stored in tanks or bags, carried in the guard's van, or underneath the carriage floor in cylinders. In the event of an accident, escaped gas could be ignited by hot cinders or sparks from locked wheels dragging along the rails. One writer, Simon Bradley, describes the combination of gas, sparks, and wooden carriage frames, as “effectively a mobile bonfire awaiting ignition”. The accident to the ‘Irish Mail’ at Abergele in August 1868 involved fire when barrels of paraffin oil burst into flames. There were 30-plus fatalities.
The use of compressed gas for illumination brought a new dimension to railway accidents. A triple accident occurred at Quintinshill, between Gretna and Kirtlebridge in 1915. On this occasion, gas ignited and fire quickly swept through the old and the cheaplymade carriages. The accident involved over 200 fatalities, many of whom were soldiers destined for Gallipoli.
The purpose of this article is to trace a selection of accidents involving fire in the years between 1840 and 1899. Unlike those accidents which have become legendary – Ais Gill, Hawes Junction, Abergele and Quintinshill – the selection of accidents related in this article are relatively low-key affairs forming everyday experiences in the nineteenth century. Full use is made of contemporary press reports, either in their entirety or in an abridged form. As photographs of the actual fires are non-existent, recourse is made to stations closely associated with the location of the fires.
1840-1849 Freeman's Journal, 26th June 1840
“On Monday night an accident which has been attended with a most serious destruction of property occurred on the line of the Great Western Railway.”
Reports circulating during the following day throughout London were varied and contradictory and it was not until a reporter ventured down to Paddington station and spoke to a GWR official that an accurate picture of the accident was obtained.
“At 11 o'clock on Monday night what is called the ‘luggage train’, a train exclusively appropriated to the conveyance of goods, left the terminus at Paddington, proceeding down the south line. It consisted of 29 trucks all heavily filled with merchandize, destined for delivery at various towns in the west of England. Each truck was covered by a large and heavy tarpaulin, supported by arched ribs, and the end secured on each side and at each end of the trucks, so that it could not be raised by the action of the wind. The train proceeded at a steady pace until it reached what is
