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The Abbots Ripton rail disaster occurred on 21 January 1876 at Abbots Ripton, then in the county of Huntingdonshire, England, now in Cambridgeshire, on the Great Northern Railway main line, previously thought to be exemplary for railway safety. In the accident, the ''Special Scotch Express'' (known informally to railway workers as 'the Scotchman' although not officially the ''Flying Scotsman'' until after 1923) train from Edinburgh to London was involved in a collision, during a blizzard,〔(), Report of the Court of Inquiry into the Circumstances Attending the Double Collision on the Great Northern Railway which occurred at Abbotts Ripton on 21 January 1876, HMSO, 1876〕 with a coal train. An express travelling in the other direction then ran into the wreckage. The initial accident was caused by: * over-reliance on signals and blockworking as allowing high-speed running even in adverse conditions * systematic signal failure in the adverse conditions of that day due to a vulnerability to accumulation of snow and ice Additional factors in the second accident were: * inadequate braking performance of the second express * failure to implement emergency procedures promptly and correctly The accident (and the subsequent inquiry into it) led to fundamental changes in British railway signalling practice. ==Overview== A coal train preceding the Flying Scotsman on the main East Coast up (south-bound) line was normally scheduled to be shunted into a siding at Abbots Ripton to allow the much faster Flying Scotsman to pass. Because of a very bad snowstorm, both the coal train and the Flying Scotsman were running late and the signalman at Holme, the next station north of Abbots Ripton, judged that the coal train needed to go into sidings at Holme if it was not to delay the Flying Scotsman. He therefore set his signal levers to danger so as to stop the coal train, but it continued on the main line until it reached Abbots Ripton, where as expected the signalman waved it on to his box with a hand lamp, and directed it to shunt. The goods train had nearly completed shunting into the Abbots Ripton siding when the Scotch express ran into it at speed. The wreckage obstructed the down (northbound) line and a second collision occurred some minutes later when a northbound express to Leeds crashed into the wreckage. Thirteen passengers died in the collisions, and 53 passengers and 6 traincrew members were injured. The Great Northern was operating on the block system, which was supposed to eliminate such accidents, so the accident caused considerable alarm. It was soon established that the main problem was with signals and snow: * the weight of snow on the semaphore arm and/or snow and ice on the wires by which the arm should be moved had meant that when signalmen had put levers to the 'danger' position from the normal 'all clear' the signals did not fully move to 'danger' * in normal conditions, signalmen could see the signals they were controlling – in a snowstorm they could not The coal train had therefore seen nothing to make it stop at Holme, and the Flying Scotsman whilst catching up with it had run through a number of signals which were showing 'clear' although their levers had been set to 'danger'. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Abbots Ripton rail accident」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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