Railway accident on the
L.B.S.C.R.
from http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk
This accident took place on the Down Line east of the former Epsom Town station. It involved the 0800 London to Brighton via Epsom and Dorking LBSCR passenger train service (a route noteworthy for not being possible now) colliding with an empty train from Sutton.
One passenger received slight injuries and three carriages of the Brighton train were damaged, as was the buffer beam of the locomotive hauling the empty train.
The empty train was formed of three coaches and a brake van and arrived on the Down Line a little late, at 0847. The engine and first two carriages were to form a portion of the 10.18 service to London, which would depart from the Up Line. The third carriage and brake van were to be detached. However, as the Brighton train was due at 0853, the head porter decided there was not enough time for the empty train to complete the shunting manoeuvres needed to get the locomotive onto the other end of the train, the carriages onto the opposite platform and the spare carriage and brake van detached; instead, it was decided to recess the empty train out of the way in a siding adjoining the Down Line whilst the Brighton train passed.
PHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN
Loco No. 292, July 1874 at Seaford
SPEEDOMETERS ON THE FOOTPLATE
Extracted and adapted from the N.R.M. website
Judging the speed of the train was done purely through the driver’s skill, using his route knowledge and mileposts next to the track. This is despite the fact that speed recording equipment had existed for decades.
On the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway Class G locomotive, designed by William Stroudley. The first of Stroudley’s speed indicators was fitted to locomotive Grosvenor, built in 1874. 13 more locomotives were ordered with some modifications, the last being delivered in 1881. The drawings below shows Stroudley’s patented speed indicator as fitted to locomotive No. 350. Southbourne.
logarithmic and each
line is marked with a
speed starting at 5
m.p.h. with a
maximum of 55 m.p.h.
underneath the top line.
It’s nearly impossible to say how many accidents or lives could have been saved if the speed indicator had been fitted on the Brighton lines. There seem to no obvious reason why Stroudley and the L.B.S.C.R. introduced them. There was no other pre-grouping railway company that decided to use them. The London & South Western Railway, tried a few speed recorders around 1909, but still much later than the L.B.S.C.R.