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Unexplained Railway Accidents—Or Unexplained Aspects Of Otherwise Explainable Accidents

RaM said:
Make me wonder if the lights and speed of the train could cause a seizure.
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I'm not really ready to do a full posting on Moorgate, and may never be, but my position is that it is inexplicable with the information we have.

Some things that make me believe that:

a) The short Northern City line has no stations that are normally 'run through', that is, not stopped at when they are open.

b) Immediately before the Moorgate terminus, there is a crossover (set of points) that the accident train negotiated, and must alert anyone not completely out of it to the location.

c) The previous stops on the journey were made normally, indicating an adequate level of awareness.

d) The level of alcohol detected in Driver Newson would not be incapacitating, if indeed he the alcohol was not entirely due to post-mortem changes. It might affect someone having to make a split-second judgement, but no such judgement was called for.

e) No attempt was made at braking by Driver Newson. His hand was still on the 'dead man's handle'.

f) Driver Newson made apparently no attempt to protect himself.

g) The nature of the Northern City line might suggest utter boredom/trance with a short journey and frequent stops and reversals, but he hadn't been in shift very long.

All the above might make suicide the most likely explanation, except Driver Newson had drawn out money to buy a car for his daughter later that day. Unless something happened to radically alter his mental state during that last journey it seems to be untenable as an explanation.

No health condition was found to suggest the driver had a seizure or fit, and there is witness evidence, as mentioned, that he was sat normally and looking ahead, the position his body was in supports that evidence.

It's easy to seize on suicide as an explanation, but unlike known cases of suicide by plane, there is no background health or financial problems to support the theory. We are not well equipped as 21st century humans to accept 'we don't know and won't know' as an explanation, but in this case I can't see an alternative. The official report made some recommendations to prevent it happening again, but as to reason for the driver's inaction it could draw no conclusion.

Edit - 'dead man's handle' - a safety device designed to trigger the brakes and stop the train should the driver collapse for any reason. I'm not sure of the design on this particular train - some have to be held down constantly, others require a press at regular intervals.

Edit2 - quote from the official report:

"I must conclude, therefore, that the cause of this accident lay entirely in the behaviour of Motorman Newson during the final minute before the accident occurred. Whether his behaviour was deliberate or whether it was the result of a suddenly arising physical condition not revealed as a result of post-mortem examination, there is not sufficient evidence to examine, but I am satisfied that no part of the responsibility for the accident rests with any other person and that there was no fault or condition of the train, track or signalling that in any way contributed to it."
 
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Cochise said:
I'm not really ready to do a full posting on Moorgate, and may never be, but my position is that it is inexplicable with the information we have.

Some things that make me believe that:

a) The short Northern City line has no stations that are normally 'run through', that is, not stopped at when they are open.

b) Immediately before the Moorgate terminus, there is a crossover (set of points) that the accident train negotiated, and must alert anyone not completely out of it to the location.

c) The previous stops on the journey were made normally, indicating an adequate level of awareness.

d) The level of alcohol detected in Driver Newson would not be incapacitating, if indeed he the alcohol was not entirely due to post-mortem changes. It might affect someone having to make a split-second judgement, but no such judgement was called for.

e) No attempt was made at braking by Driver Newson. His hand was still on the 'dead man's handle'.

f) Driver Newson made apparently no attempt to protect himself.

g) The nature of the Northern City line might suggest utter boredom/trance with a short journey and frequent stops and reversals, but he hadn't been in shift very long.

All the above might make suicide the most likely explanation, except Driver Newson had drawn out money to buy a car for his daughter later that day. Unless something happened to radically alter his mental state during that last journey it seems to be untenable as an explanation.

No health condition was found to suggest the driver had a seizure or fit, and there is witness evidence, as mentioned, that he was sat normally and looking ahead, the position his body was in supports that evidence.

It's easy to seize on suicide as an explanation, but unlike known cases of suicide by plane, there is no background health or financial problems to support the theory. We are not well equipped as 21st century humans to accept 'we don't know and won't know' as an explanation, but in this case I can't see an alternative. The official report made some recommendations to prevent it happening again, but as to reason for the driver's inaction it could draw no conclusion.

Edit - 'dead man's handle' - a safety device designed to trigger the brakes and stop the train should the driver collapse for any reason. I'm not sure of the design on this particular train - some have to be held down constantly, others require a press at regular intervals.

Edit2 - quote from the official report:

"I must conclude, therefore, that the cause of this accident lay entirely in the behaviour of Motorman Newson during the final minute before the accident occurred. Whether his behaviour was deliberate or whether it was the result of a suddenly arising physical condition not revealed as a result of post-mortem examination, there is not sufficient evidence to examine, but I am satisfied that no part of the responsibility for the accident rests with any other person and that there was no fault or condition of the train, track or signalling that in any way contributed to it."
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I think you make some very valid observations. I wonder whether Leslie Newson slipped into autopilot, but as you say we'll never know.

The picture below apparently shows the controls of a 1938 Stock train, which was the type used on that line at the time. This might assist with the dead man's handle question.
Gb-ltmd-1938ts-cab1.jpg
 
Beresford said:
I think you make some very valid observations. I wonder whether Leslie Newson slipped into autopilot, but as you say we'll never know.

The picture below apparently shows the controls of a 1938 Stock train, which was the type used on that line at the time. This might assist with the dead man's handle question.
View attachment 69576View attachment 69576
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Yes, I've since checked up and it was the type that has to depressed all the time. That has a flaw in that an incapacitated driver might fall forward on to it and keep it depressed, but there is no evidence that this occurred in the Moorgate crash - such evidence that there was , given the terrible state of things when the driver's body was finally extracted, was that he was still upright at the time of the impact.
 
Not that we will ever know, but even taking away the possible suicide angle, what was his mental state really?

Did he get some really bad news recently? Was he worried about something (financial etc)?

I can totally see someone getting so deep into these types of worrying thoughts and trying to figure out how to handle them and then not being aware of how much time has passed nor where exactly you are. Engaged in a very familiar task, and for him probably, a familiar place, people zone out all of the time.

This would also explain why he was sitting as he would be to drive the train.
 
eburacum said:
Did you see Mitch McConnell 'blank out' during a press conference?
Maybe this happened to the driver at Moorgate.
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Yes, that seems likely to me, especially as every other avenue of evidence has been exhausted.

It's suggested on the Wikipedia page that Newsom may have suffered from a momentary blackout.
A lot more is known about these conditions now.

Medical evidence presented to the inquiry raised the possibility that the driver had been affected by conditions such as transient global amnesia or akinesis with mutism, where the brain continues to function and the individual remains aware, although not being able to move physically.

There was no evidence to indicate either condition: to positively diagnose akinesis with mutism would depend on a microscopic examination of the brain, which was not possible because of decomposition, and transient global amnesia leaves no traces.[81] McNaughton's report found that there was insufficient evidence to say if the accident was due to a deliberate act or a medical condition.
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Interestingly, 2019 LAPIS conference speaker Dr Rob Gandy described having one. Here's a post with my mention of it on'ere - #143

This sounds convincing to me, with my lifelong interest in these conditions and especially their possible role in what are interpreted as Fortean events, as mentioned by Dr Gandy.

Except... Newsom had already overrun the same platform twice in the previous week. With hindsight, that might be interpreted as taking practice runs. From the Wiki page -
(Harris was the Guard.)

During the inquest Harris testified that Newson had also overshot a platform three or four days before the accident, and a passenger had also reported a second overshoot by Newson that week. The suicide expert Bruce Danto stated of the overshoots, "that does not sound like misjudgment to me. That sounds like a man who is getting the feeling of how to run a train into a wall".[79]
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A terrible possibility.
Suicidal people can become expert at hiding their intentions. Carrying out their normal routines and duties is part of this.
Once they've made up their minds to end their lives they can become calm and even jovial, in contrast to their previous depressed or tumultuous moods.
Newsom's promise to buy his daughter a car, and having the cash on him, fits into this interpretation. He'd had a couple of tries at missing the platform so knew he could go that far. Today, tomorrow, next week, he'd found he could do it with just a little more speed.

He'd have to pass stop signs to do this, which all his training forbade.
I'd suggest that approaching the signs when he should have stopped was the definite step towards suicide, rather than the physical moving past the platform.

The problems with this idea are;
1. Newsom was not depressed or suicidal as far as the very intense investigations could tell.
2. As we don't know what was going on in his mind it's unfair to blame him.

I'll add that young Harris the Guard, who came across in the official report as rather feckless, had noticed the train's previous overshooting of the platform.

While I don't know what the procedure for reporting this type of incident was back then - and I assume it would now be done automatically by track monitoring - I can't imagine a newish 18 year-old Guard who already had a reputation for tardiness and 'indiscipline' even contemplating bringing this up.

If he had, what would have happened? Would he have been ignored or fobbed off, as I suspect Harris expected, or would there be an enquiry?
Might Newsom's supervisor have just had a quiet word? We'll never know.
 
Maybe he had intended to end it on the previous over runs but backed out at the last minute.
I would not expect a conscientious driver to make the same mistake so soon after the first if
it was a mistake that is.
 
I'm unconvinced by the 'trial overruns' theory as preliminaries to suicide. He didn't just overrun, he kept going at what for that line was normal line speed. However, they might tie in with @brownmane's point about him having some major distraction going on in his life.

No evidence of such a distraction has come out and his mental state was probed pretty thoroughly because of the suicide theory, but some men keep things very private. Maybe it wasn't directly his problem but a close relative's problem that was playing on his mind?
 
Cochise said:
I'm unconvinced by the 'trial overruns' theory as preliminaries to suicide. He didn't just overrun, he kept going at what for that line was normal line speed. However, they might tie in with @brownmane's point about him having some major distraction going on in his life.

No evidence of such a distraction has come out and his mental state was probed pretty thoroughly because of the suicide theory, but some men keep things very private. Maybe it wasn't directly his problem but a close relative's problem that was playing on his mind?
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Yup, that was my point. He appeared to have been seeing if he could bring himself to pass the signals.
Which doesn't mean that's what he was doing, it just looks that way. The expert certainly thought it did.
 
Have to say I've always taken an interest in this crash, partly because I was aware of it at the time. I'd only recently travelled alone on the Tube for the first time; found myself looking at a Tube map and noting that I'd been nowhere near Moorgate.

Also, my family are railway and this sort of incident was often discussed among us. Some relations knew a lot about lights, brakes, safety etc.
All railway crashes are interesting. Trains are generally very safe and the causes are usually found, hopefully leading to new safety measures.
However, Moorgate will probably always be a puzzle.
 
The Underground runs so many trains that some driver-related but inexplicable crashes seem inevitable, unless the system can prevent them. I think that nowadays all important terminus stations are protected by train protection and warning systems that would not allow trains to approach a dead end without braking. This may not be the case on some minor lines, goods lines and heritage lines, but I expect they will all be protected in a similar way, eventually. Indeed, trains in urban locations are increasingly autonomous and free from the possibility of human error, although there are still risks of various kinds.
 
This is kind of interesting re Moorgate:


In this case the accident was blamed on petrol fumes sort-of anesthetising the driver. Could it be that going up those very limited tunnels ( Drayton Park to Moorgate before BR took over) that the oxygen became so enervated that an old and stressed driver making repeated trips simply passed out?
 
eburacum said:
The Underground runs so many trains that some driver-related but inexplicable crashes seem inevitable, unless the system can prevent them. I think that nowadays all important terminus stations are protected by train protection and warning systems that would not allow trains to approach a dead end without braking. This may not be the case on some minor lines, goods lines and heritage lines, but I expect they will all be protected in a similar way, eventually. Indeed, trains in urban locations are increasingly autonomous and free from the possibility of human error, although there are still risks of various kinds.
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The system has been set up to prevent to head or following crashes since the 1930's. Using measures only applicable to the relatively low speed and snow-free trains the Underground experiences.

But the idea that an experienced driver would not know he was entering a terminal station was overlooked. That has now absolutely been fixed, and I'd suggest you'd be safer on a modern Underground train than pretty much anywhere else in the world (excluding passengers attacking each other)
 
That's right. I think it is two metres nowadays, but same thing. There were four or five people on the observation veranda when the crash happened; basically just a rough shunt, but the people on the veranda would have been knocked flying.

I suspect that the problem might be that there were too many people on the footplate of the locomotive. Nowadays a heritage loco generally has about four people on the footplate in a space designed for two. Sometimes it must be difficult to pass messages to the driver from whoever is looking out of the cab, or the driver might be distracted in other ways.
 
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