On This Day in 1955, Sutton Coldfield Train Crash

On this day, 23 January 1955, a serious derailment tore through Sutton Coldfield station on the London Midland Region route between Wichnor Junction and Birmingham (New Street). At about 4.13 pm, the 12.15 pm express from York to Bristol, routed via Sheffield, Derby, Burton-on-Trent and Birmingham, entered the station at a speed that the track at that location could not safely tolerate.

The train, hauled by steam locomotive No. 45274 and made up of ten bogie coaches, was carrying about 300 passengers. Because of routine permanent way renewals on the usual main-line route via Tamworth, it had been booked over the secondary line via Lichfield and Sutton Coldfield instead. The train’s regular driver was unfamiliar with that route, so a local driver joined at Burton to act as a conductor over the section to Birmingham.

Approaching Sutton Coldfield, the line is subject to long-standing permanent speed restrictions intended to keep trains under control on the gradients and curvature: 40 mph on the section from Four Oaks to Sutton Coldfield, and 30 mph through Sutton Coldfield station itself on account of the severe left-hand curve. The express did not slow as required. It entered the curve through the station at about 55–60 mph, and the ensuing derailment left the engine and all coaches except the tenth off the rails, flung to the outside of the curve between the platforms.

The physical damage was devastating. The engine and tender overturned, and the destruction of the leading vehicles was severe: the 1st, 4th and 5th coaches were destroyed. Both platforms and the track between them suffered heavy damage, and part of the Down platform awning was carried away, leaving the station scene unrecognisable in the immediate aftermath.

Seventeen people lost their lives. In the official accounting that followed, twelve passengers, the conductor driver and the fireman were killed outright; two passengers and a driver travelling on duty later died in hospital. The casualties extended far beyond those deaths: forty passengers were taken to hospital, with some discharged after treatment the same afternoon while others were detained with serious injuries, and many more people reported minor injury or shock.

With the station closed and unattended on a Sunday and the signal box switched out of circuit with signals clear for through running, the risk did not end with the wreckage itself. A northbound express was already in the section on the opposite line, but it was stopped at the home signal well clear of the wreckage after two railwaymen travelling on the derailed train ran to the unoccupied signal box and put the signals to danger; two nearby residents also ran along the line to warn approaching traffic. The later official inquiry found no defects in track, locomotive or stock that contributed to the derailment, concluding it was caused solely by disregard of the 30 mph restriction, and it noted that lineside speed restriction notices or signs might have acted as the reminder that prevented such a lapse.