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The Sonning Cutting railway accident occurred during the early hours of 24 December 1841 in the Sonning Cutting through Sonning Hill, near Reading, Berkshire. A Great Western Railway (GWR) luggage train travelling from London Paddington to Bristol Temple Meads station entered Sonning Cutting. The train comprised the broad-gauge locomotive ''Hecla'', a tender, three third-class passenger carriages and some heavily laden goods waggons. The passenger carriages 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, causing it to slow rapidly. The passenger coaches were crushed between the goods waggons and the tender. Eight passengers died at the scene and seventeen were injured seriously, one of whom died later in hospital. Details of the accident and subsequent proceedings were reported widely by the newspapers of the day. ==First reports== The first reports of the accident were published in The Times on Christmas Day, with the headline "''Frightful Accident on the Great Western Railway''". Reporting was hindered by "''strict reserve on the part of all the company's servants''", but the account given in the newspaper could, according to The Times "''be relied on as substantially correct''". The train left Paddington at about 4.30 am with about 38 passengers aboard "''chiefly of the poorer class''". Just before 7.00 am, in Sonning cutting, the train ran into soil that had slipped from the side of the cutting onto the track, covering it two or three feet deep. The engine and tender were derailed immediately and "''the next truck, which contained the passengers, was thrown athwart the line, and in an instant was overwhelmed by the trucks behind, which were thrown into the air by the violence of the collision, and fell with fearful force upon it''". Eight passengers were killed and sixteen others were "''more or less severely wounded''". After being extracted from the wreckage, the injured were taken to the Royal Berkshire Hospital at Reading, and the dead were carried to a hut near the site of the crash. An inquest on those killed was opened at 3.00 pm on the same day, in a nearby public house, but The Times's correspondent could not obtain details of the evidence produced there. However, he wrote that, in the opinion of people living in the neighbourhood of the crash, the part of the cutting where the accident occurred was not secure; the cutting was deep, the sides were too steep and the soil through which it was cut was said to be of a "''loose springy nature''" that showed a tendency to slip. Bank-slips had occurred before in the cutting near to the crash site and these had been reported to the Great Western Railway. However, the GWR watchman responsible for this section of the line had reported that when examined at 5.00 pm on the day before the accident "''there was not the slightest appearance of there being any danger of a slip taking place''". Later it was determined that the slip must have occurred after 4.30 am, because this was the time that the "up" mail train passed through the cutting on its way to London. Isambard Kingdom Brunel, engineer of the GWR, on hearing of the crash left London with about one hundred workmen, in a special train, to clear the soils from the line. 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「Sonning Cutting railway accident」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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