Blood on the Tracks: A History of Railway Crime in Britain (26 page)

Navvies of the 1890s, probably engaged on the building of the Great Central Railway’s London Extension.

Trespass

The total number of people killed while trespassing on the railways has never been computed but records suggest that in 1843 at least seventeen died and in 1903 the remarkable figure of 442 is given. Moving trains and railway installations provided a host of hazards, but despite notices to the effect that trespassers were liable to prosecution (under criminal rather than civil law), they have and indeed continue to take risks, including using the railway as a short cut.

The memorial in Otley churchyard to the navvies who died in the building of the nearby Bramhope Tunnel.

In the earliest days of the railways people seemed to find it hard to appreciate that if a train was bearing down on them it could not swerve to avoid hitting them unlike a horse and rider or a horse-drawn wagon or carriage. It would be futile to attempt to identify all the reasons why trespass has taken place, but it often occurred when some other offence was being perpetrated such as theft of railway property or poaching.

Drunks often took short cuts along railway lines, endangering themselves as well as others. In 1844 at Hebden Bridge in the old West Riding of Yorkshire a man was found asleep right by the railway track, his head only inches from the rail. Such was the depth of his drunken slumbers that at least two trains
had passed on this particular track, one of which had knocked his hat off, without him awakening. The courts have not generally been very understanding where befuddled and confused passengers have trespassed, even if they did so unconsciously.

In 1864 a company generally known as the Solway Junction Railway was established with the intention of moving iron ore from West Cumberland to the iron and steel works in Lanarkshire in Scotland. To provide a short route independent of rival companies the decision was taken to build a viaduct from just south of Annan on the Scottish side to Bowness on the English shore across the notoriously dangerous waters of the Solway Firth. The Solway Viaduct was a rather flimsy-looking structure no less than 1,940yds long and carried on 193 cast-iron piers. It opened fully for traffic in 1870.

This long-forgotten viaduct proved to be something of a white elephant because the high-quality Cumberland haematite ore was mostly worked out by the end of the century. It also proved expensive to maintain because the piers were scoured by the unpredictable currents in the firth, and in cold winters substantial ice floes came down the Solway hitting and seriously damaging the structure.

The few remaining trains were withdrawn in 1921 and the viaduct was left to its own devices. It was demolished between 1933 and 1935 and the only traffic in the final years had been doughty, determined and thirsty Scotsmen who trespassed by walking across the increasingly decrepit viaduct so that they could enjoy a few drinks in the English pubs on a Sunday, their own being closed on that day.

To walk across the viaduct was no mean undertaking on account of its exposure to howling winds and spray thrown up by the turbulent waters of the firth and its increasingly unsafe condition. Eventually a watchman was employed at the southern end to stop trespass but it was found easy to bribe him with a bottle or two which made his lonely vigil a little more bearable. Generations of trainspotters systematically trespassed when entering locomotive sheds and works in pursuit of engine numbers. These places were quite extraordinarily hazardous and even more so at night when spotters felt they were less likely to be seen. Some sheds attracted spotters, or ‘gricers’ as they were sometimes known, in huge numbers and staff were forced to spend much of their time in a futile attempt to keep them out.

At some sheds this was like trying to plug a collapsing dam with a finger and staff simply gave up, disgusted by the antics of those who regarded themselves as railway enthusiasts. Occasionally they or the railway police caught a few youths and gave them a good talking to. In the 1950s and 1960s this might have given them sufficient enough a scare to act as a deterrent… until the next time. At some of the most sought-after and well-guarded sheds, Crewe North comes to mind, the spotters would gather in a group of thirty or more
and storm their way into the shed on the basis that they could not all be caught, and that between them they would manage to note down all the numbers, including those in the shed’s inner recesses. Such a stampede was almost impossible to prevent.

The Solway Viaduct. The approach embankment to this lonely and ill-fated viaduct can be still seen on the English side of the Solway Firth not far from Bowness-on-Solway.

Elsewhere great ingenuity might be employed in gaining access to the hallowed portals of a shed. Spotters might squat down so that they could not be seen by the foreman as they shuffled surreptitiously past the office window at the entrance, or they might hide out of view behind a moving engine and gain access that way. Holes in fences, a scuttle across a convenient roof or even climbing a tree and dropping from a well-placed branch – these and a host of other methods were employed in the attempt to gain entry and secure some more ‘cops’ to put in the treasured
ABC
.

Notices warning against trespass were studiously ignored and it was known that few trespassing spotters were ever actually taken to court. Even live electric conductor rails such as those in the vicinity of a Gateshead shed on Tyneside were not enough to deter some of the more determined, or should we say foolhardy, spotters. It was a risk they were prepared to take to be able to enter those elusive numbers in their books.

One of the most serious cases of trespass occurred on the evening of 23 May 1970 on the Britannia Bridge across the Menai Strait between the Welsh mainland and Anglesey. This remarkable piece of engineering was designed by Robert Stephenson for the Chester & Holyhead Railway and opened in 1850. It consisted of two masonry piers supporting four rectangular wrought iron tubes through which the trains ran. In fact it was a larger and more sophisticated version of Stephenson’s other tubular bridge at Conwy.

Two boys climbed onto the bridge. They may or may not have been looking for birds’ nests or for bats but because it was dark they made impromptu torches out of burning paper. Pieces of burning paper ignited oil and creosote deposits and collections of dried leaves, and quickly the tubes became an inferno. They
were damaged beyond reasonable repair and for a while it looked as if the line to Holyhead which crossed the bridge might have to be closed permanently. Eventually the bridge was reconstructed without the tubes and as a double-decker bridge with the A55 road running above the railway.

No.46256
Sir William Stanier
F.R.S and its companion No.46257
City of Salford
were refinements of the original ‘Coronation’ Pacifics designed by Stanier for the London, Midland & Scottish Railway in the late 1930s. They were built in 1947, and for many enthusiasts represent the apogee of British steam express passenger locomotive design development. When No.46256 was withdrawn for scrapping, it was still in first-class running order. Crewe North Shed is the location.

A Peeping Tom

In 1954 an engine driver and his younger fireman mate had worked a freight train from Buxton to Hooton in the Wirral where they were relieved, a new crew taking it on the last stage of its journey to Birkenhead only a few miles down the line. The men were then due to travel back ‘on
the cushions’ – railway parlance for travelling in the comfort of a passenger train. It was not always a quick and easy journey for such enginemen to get back to their home depot although it helped that they were being paid for doing so.

Sometimes control would come through with an instruction that there was another job for them – working a train back towards their own depot, but no such unwelcome message was received and it was with some relief that the duo caught a local train to Rock Ferry, where they transferred to an electric train which took them under the River Mersey and to the low level platforms at Liverpool Central. At the high level platforms of Liverpool Central they were due to catch a train to Warrington and, having checked that control had not found them a job, they settled down in a compartment on a late evening train destined for Manchester Central.

The train was made up of what were then suburban-style compartment coaches hauled by a Stanier 2-6-4 tank engine. These carriages had traditional slam doors and bench seats facing each other across the width of the coach. The fireman sat by the door on the off side of the carriage, facing the direction of travel. The driver was the only other occupant of the compartment. The train puffed out of Liverpool Central and plunged into a series of gloomy, soot-encrusted tunnels and cuttings before emerging into the open air at Brunswick with a brief view of the southern end of Liverpool’s long dockland waterfront.

At this point it was still possible at that time to glimpse a three-car train on Liverpool’s famous Overhead Railway. Even at night these made a great spectacle. On this occasion, however, the driver could not spare a thought for the view, because even before the train had emerged into the open air he said that there was the sound of smashing glass and a large hole appeared in the window by his mate’s head. The fireman, he said, was unconscious and his head was bleeding badly.

He presumed that some heavy object had been thrown and the result was the injury to his mate. The driver pulled the communication cord and the train came to a halt at St Michael’s station. An ambulance was called and the unfortunate fireman, still unconscious, was rushed to hospital but pronounced dead on arrival. The police were called in to investigate. There had been a spate of stone-throwing on this section of line but this time throwing stones had led to a death. Or had it?

The carriage and the compartment were closely examined by the police and it was immediately confirmed that the carriage window had indeed been broken from the outside, but where was the missile involved? It certainly was not to be seen inside the compartment. So where was it? Then bloodstains were found on the
outside
of the carriage. The line in the vicinity of the incident was searched immediately.