Another frightful accident, due to the negligence of the signalman, happened at Manor House Cabin, near Thirsk, on the North-Eastern Railway, in a dense fog, on the night of November 2nd, 1892, by which ten persons lost their lives. A goods train was standing in the station on the main line. The signalman, being fatigued, dropped asleep at his post. Presently he was awakened rather sharply by the ominous rumbling of the Scotch express, which had left Edinburgh for London at 10.30, and was now travelling at full speed. The signalman jumped to his feet, and, forgetting all about the stationary goods train waiting in the station on the same set of metals, signalled the approaching train.
THE DÉBRIS OF THE THIRSK DISASTER ON FIRE.
Clarke, Thirsk, Photo
On came the express through the dense fog, and crashed into the goods train with such force that the engines and all the carriages, with the exception of a Pullman sleeping-car, were thrown off the line. The carriages were all piled up, and the horrors of the catastrophe were accentuated by the broken and splintered wreckage catching fire. In our illustration the engine may be descried on the right, but a skeleton of its former majestic self, surrounded by a heterogeneous mass of broken wheels, iron joists, twisted and fashioned into the most fantastic shapes by the joint agencies of the collision and fire.
THE PULLMAN CAR AND ENGINE AFTER THE THIRSK COLLISION.
Clarke, Thirsk, Photo
The Pullman car, or rather the charred remains of it, presents a most bizarre though painful object, being quite destitute of those many sumptuous embellishments which characterised it but a few hours previously. The Marquesses of Tweeddale and Huntly were travelling in this car, but they fortunately escaped without injury.
Some commiseration should be extended to the signalman, however, as he had been up at home since six o'clock that morning, his youngest child having died the day before. When he went on duty at eight o'clock in the evening he begged the stationmaster to excuse him under the painful circumstances, but no substitute could be found, and he resumed his duties in the ordinary course of things, with the result that Nature, who would not be denied, caused the signalman to sleep. The railway company were severely censured in the subsequent inquiry for the long hours of duty inflicted upon signalmen.