[Archived] Train Crash At Preston

[Hanks]

http://archive.lancashireeveningtelegraph..../19/810114.html

above is a link to an article about the bridge collapse

Just in case the link stops working this is the article originally published on the telegraph site. please delete mods if not allowed WAITING for a train can hardly have been a greater torment than that experienced by the crowd gathered at Blackburn's railway station 46 years ago tonight.

They didn't want to go anywhere. Instead, the mothers, fathers, wives, sons and daughters who flocked there desperately wanted news. The silent dread that filled each one as the first of the trains approached was that it might bring tragedy to their lives.

For anguished hours that Saturday night, hundreds of families in Blackburn and beyond endured the agony of not knowing as word arrived of a disaster barely a dozen miles across the county.

The news travelled fast - a footbridge at Bury's Knowsley Street station had collapsed on to the tracks with hundreds of homeward-bound Blackburn Rovers fans on it.

But in the aftermath, as the emergency services at Bury strove to cope with the casualties, little else was known at Blackburn. Phone lines to the hospital at Bury were jammed. The police had scant information.

How many? And who? Rumour was doing its ugly work as the answers failed to come. Large numbers had been seriously injured and some killed, it said.

Desperate for details of loved ones who had gone by train to join the 25,000-plus crowd at the Lancashire derby at Gigg Lane, hundreds went to the station to meet the homecoming trains.

The first two were late but their arrival only added to the relatives' agony. Swinging rattles and cheering the Rovers' victory, the fans who poured from the carriages knew nothing of the accident or the scenes they had left behind at Bury.

So the anguish went on as the other trains out of Bury that night were held up by the mayhem at Knowsley Street. Because of the delay, many fans who went by rail took buses home and, of those who eventually rode back on the held-up trains home and had witnessed the bridge collapse, most were still too shocked to impart information to the waiting crowd at Blackburn and only wanted to get home.

Meantime, a special bus brought home 50 who had been slightly injured.

But where were the rest? The names of those kept in hospital came through "with maddening slowness," the Northern Daily Telegraph reported.

And it was 10pm before the crowd at the station was told that the rest of the injured, not kept in hospital, would be sent home by ambulance during the night.

It was not until the day after that the extent of the disaster became clear.

More than 200 fans were on the wooden footbridge when it fell 20 feet on to the track; 175 were injured; 120 of them taken to Bury General Hospital and 37 detained with injuries ranging from fractures to spinal injuries. Ambulances from eight towns were needed and buses, taxis and private cars also carried fans to the hospital where almost every ward filled with injured, some lying on mattresses on the floor.

One man - a 66-year-old retired weaver - died soon afterwards.

Another 52-year-old man, who had fractured his ribs and collar bone, died 16 days later after being admitted to hospital in Blackburn for an operation.

Yet the disaster could have been an even greater tragedy.

For as scores of injured lay on the tracks - among them our reporter who, despite a broken leg, asked helpers to call his paper with news of the accident - a special train was heading for the station.

But a porter, later hailed as a hero at an official inquiry, quickly realised the danger and dashed to phone the signal boxes on either side of the station to get them to block all the lines to it and the in-bound train was halted 200 yards from the scene.

What had gone wrong? The inquest into the first victim's death heard three days afterwards from a British Railways bridge inspector that metal straps on the bridge were "very badly corroded" and had been 10 to 15 years in reaching that condition.

Railways officials had also partially reconstructed the bridge from the wreckage and found that that its central member was missing so that instead of having three upright supports, it only had two.

The inquest jury, delivering a "misadventure" verdict, concluded that the bridge had not been adequately inspected for a number of years.

At the public inquiry 10 days after the accident, a British Railways engineer said the 70-year-old bridge had been officially inspected in 1944 and 1948.

But a consulting engineer called as a witness claimed there had been no proper inspection for upwards for upwards of 10 years and probably 25 years.

"It was a bridge of which our forefathers would have been proud.

"But it was liable to rot," he said.

Yet why had so many been on the bridge - more than 200 people, packed five and six deep?

And for so long - for up to 20 minutes while gates to the station platforms were locked?

Ironically, as the inquest was told, it was for safety reasons - to avoid overcrowding on the platforms.

That premiss was blasted away in an instant that awful Saturday evening - as one of the injured, Blackburn policeman PC F Haythornthwaite, told afterwards. "There was a terrific crack and the bridge dropped about two feet and then it crashed to the ground," he said. "There was a deathly silence at first, then people began to scream."

Among the fans who rushed to help the injured from the tracks that day was one in his early 20s - Jack Walker, now the Rovers owner, and his brother Fred.

'Spite' wall riddle

EVER heard of a wall whose foundations were spite?

Reader Jack Dickinson, of Cherry Lea, Blackburn, remains intrigued by just such a wall - though it's more than 50 years since he first came across it.

Then a young apprentice painter and decorator, he was working at the time at the Grove private maternity clinic at the top end of Knowsley Road, Wilpshire, close to the nearby Methodist church.

At the end of the day, he and his workmates caught the bus at a stop in Ribchester Road, opposite a large house known as Clayton Grange - across from which stood a curious wall, around 10ft long and a few feet high.

"It was built of rubble, old tiles, half-bricks and the like," he said.

"On inquiring, I was told it was a 'spite' wall.

"It seems that, many years before, the owner of the big house realised he could be seen inside his home by the occupants of the house across and ordered them to build a wall at their own expense to prevent them from looking in.

"And they did - using all this old material.

"I assume he was able to make them build it because it was all his land in any case."

The wall, says Jack, was rebuilt years ago but he asks: does anyone else remember it and the story?

Let me know me if you do.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.

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From the Lancashire Evening Telegraph

http://www.lancashireeveningtelegraph.co.uk

© Newsquest Media Group 1998

[cletus]

interesting read. many thanks

[USABlue]

Paul Astley, as in "Gaz" Astley. If it's the same bloke I am thinking he used to drive me and me mates to a lot of the away games.

Click

Thanks for the pics, it is the one and the same Paul Astley. Someone tell him hello for me.

Bloody hell did not realise this thread was over a year old.

Edited September 14, 2007 by USABlue

[revolutionrock!]

Paul Astley, great bloke.

Went to Feyenoord and Leverkusen with him, sound guy.

[thenodrog]

Paul Astley, great bloke.

Went to Feyenoord and Leverkusen with him, sound guy.

Imagine the claims that would be flying in now if the Bury bridge collapse happened now in our claim ridden culture. There'd prob be twice as many claims than people in the crowd at Gigg Lane.

[Fife Rover]

Imagine the claims that would be flying in now if the Bury bridge collapse happened now in our claim ridden culture. There'd prob be twice as many claims than people in the crowd at Gigg Lane.

This has got to stop Theno; I find myself in complete agreement with you again!

PS. That's quite thought isn't it! 50,000 people on that little wooden bridge at once.

Edited September 15, 2007 by Fife Rover

[thenodrog]

This has got to stop Theno; I find myself in complete agreement with you again!

PS. That's quite thought isn't it! 50,000 people on that little wooden bridge at once.

No wonder it collapsed then eh?