On This Day in 1945, Kings Cross Train Crash

On this day, 4 February 1945, London King’s Cross was the scene of a rare and deadly mishap in the final months of the Second World War. At 18:00, a Leeds-bound express left platform 5 five minutes late, formed of 17 coaches hauled by the LNER Class A4 Pacific No. 2512, Silver Fox. Minutes later, the train would be involved in a low-speed but devastating collision that killed two passengers and injured others.

The route out of King’s Cross immediately funnels trains into Gasworks Tunnel. After a short dip, the line rises through the tunnel on a long gradient, and by late 1943 it had become routine for heavy departures to receive a brief shove from the locomotive that had brought the empty stock into the platform. But on this particular evening that assistance was not available, because the coaches had been propelled into the platform rather than hauled in, leaving no engine positioned at the rear to help the train clear the incline.

There was another complication. Overnight and into the morning of 3–4 February, worn rail on the No. 1 down main line had been replaced as part of routine maintenance, and the relaid section had been in use since 12:45 that day. The new rail offered less adhesion than the old, and as Silver Fox reached the rising gradient deeper in the tunnel it began to slip badly. With the assisting locomotive absent and the engine’s sanding equipment not working fully, the locomotive could not grip the rail and the train came to a stand.

In the darkness the driver, focused on his tasks at the controls, did not notice that the train had stopped and then begun to move the wrong way. The stalled express started to run back towards the station, an especially dangerous scenario on a busy terminus throat where points are being reset for the next departures. Behind it, the layout was already being prepared for another service to leave from platform 10.

That next working was the 19:00 “Aberdonian” to Aberdeen, with its coaches already waiting in platform 10. Realising the Leeds train was rolling back, the signalman operated the points in an attempt to route it into unoccupied platform 15, but the move came too late: the first bogie of the rearmost coach had already passed. The two bogies then took different routes, and the rear of the train collided with the front of the coaches in platform 10.

The impact forced the rear coach up into a signal gantry, crushing one of its first-class compartments. Two passengers were killed, including Cecil Kimber, the former managing director and co-founder of the MG car company. In all, 25 passengers were injured and the train attendant was also hurt. Emergency measures were introduced to keep traffic moving, including hand signalling for main-line movements and the curtailment of some suburban services, and while the wrecked gantry was replaced within a fortnight, full services at King’s Cross were not restored until 23 February 1945.