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Great Western Railway accidents include several notable incidents that influenced rail safety in the United Kingdom. ==Notable accidents== In common with other railway companies, the GWR experienced accidents throughout its history, one of the most serious being the Sonning Cutting accident in December 1842. Nine workmen were killed when their train hit a landslip. The accident occurred in the early hours of 24 December 1841 in the Sonning Cutting, near Reading, in Berkshire, as a luggage train travelling from London to Bristol entered the cutting. The train comprised the broad-gauge locomotive ''Hecla'' and its tender, three third-class passenger waggons and some heavily-laden goods waggons. The passenger waggons were between the tender and the goods waggons. Recent heavy rain had saturated the soil in the cutting causing it to slip, covering the line on which the train was travelling. On running into the slipped soil the engine was derailed, and the passenger waggons were crushed between the goods waggons and the tender. Eight passengers died at the scene and sixteen were seriously injured, one of whom died later in hospital. The accident had important repurcussions because it led to the Railway Regulation Act 1844. William Ewart Gladstone introduced his bill to regulate the way passengers were transported, such as protection of third-class passengers, and to introduce much greater government control of the growing network. The Act established the Parliamentary train with fares limited by statute. The most serious accident however, occurred on 24 December 1874, when a double-headed passenger train from Paddington to Birkenhead derailed near Kidlington just north of Oxford and 34 passengers were killed. The Shipton-on-Cherwell train crash was caused by the fracture of a single wheel on an old carriage just behind the locomotive's tender. The carriage continued upright until the drivers saw what had happened and applied the brakes. The following carriages crushed the old waggon and it was thrown off the track, with the rest of the train behind. The locomotives travelled some distance before the drivers realised what had happened and returned to help rescue efforts. The investigation which followed was led by William Yolland and established the root causes very quickly. The tyre was on an old carriage, and was of an obsolete design. The fracture started at a rivet hole, possibly by metal fatigue, although it was not recognised as such by the inquiry. The weather was very cold that day, with snow blanketing the fields and very low freezing temperatures, another factor which hastened the tyre failure. The disaster led to a re-appraisal of braking methods and systems, and eventual adoption of continuous automatic brakes being fitted to trains, based either on the Westinghouse air brake or a vacuum brake. The Railway Inspectorate recommended Mansell wheels, a type of wooden composite wheel, be adopted by the railway companies since the design had a better safety record than the alternatives. There had been a long history of failed wheels involved in serious accidents, especially in the previous decade. They were also critical of the communication method between the locomotive and the rest of the train using an external cord and gong, suggesting that a telegraphic method be adopted instead. The Shipton disaster came in a period, the 1870s, when railway accidents were at their peak, never equalled before or since. The national network had grown enormously but basic equipment had been neglected, and old equipment kept in service when it should have been scrapped years before. The sequence of railway tragedies ended with the Tay rail bridge disaster of 1879, but accidents continued, although at a lower level. 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「Great Western Railway accidents」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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