Railway staff & the 1921 Abermule disaster

Last week we went to Aberystwyth, for the launch of Transport for Wales ‘Railway 200’ programme. The launch was excellent, bringing together the current industry, heritage railways, politicians, community representatives and historians, at the Vale of Rheidol Railway. We even got the chance to drive a steam engine – not to be turned down!

Taking the location as our cue, last week’s blog looked at some of the ways in which Aberystwyth and its workers appear in the Railway Work, Life & Death project database. On the day of the launch, we travelled to Aberystwyth by train, live-posting the route as we went, on Twitter and Bluesky. The journey to Aberystwyth took us from Shrewsbury, along the Cambrian Line – a new route for us. It was spectacular, even through some less than ideal weather, especially the cutting at Talerddig and the Dovey estuary.

We also passed through two locations which were familiar to us by name, because of accident connections. The first was the hamlet of Pontdolgoch, which featured an accident involved station master Robert Stanbury. It was particularly touching that earlier on the morning of our journey, Derek Savage, the author of a guest blog which explored Stanbury’s earlier life, got in touch to remind us to look out for Pontdolgoch on the way through.

Before this, we had passed through the site of the infamous 1921 Abermule disaster. As it was a passenger crash, it doesn’t feature directly in the Railway Work, Life & Death project’s existing focus, which has been on the less frequently noticed worker accidents. However, in looking at a new set of records to be added to the project database over the summer, we found that the Abermule disaster appeared. As we shall see, these records give us additional detail about the staff involved – as well as the ability to put single accidents in a wider context. This will be a really valuable addition to our existing understanding, and an important contribution our project can make.

 

Embodied practice

Very often the Railway Inspectorate accident records which survive give us enough detail to gain a technical understanding of what happened at the moment of the accident. Sometimes that’s not always possible – terminology isn’t clear, or the report relies upon assumed knowledge of the reader; something which was once obvious has since passed beyond memory as practices changed. The trade union records tend to give some level of social and political understanding of what happened, very often concerned with after the accident. They often show financial or legal support given by the Union to its members.

All of this is paper-based – and that’s well and good. Does it matter that we haven’t seen or experienced it ourselves? On some levels, no. But we might be missing something. Direct experience might open up new understanding, new ways of approaching the people and the topics, and a more empathetic approach to the past. So what do we mean by ‘direct experience’?

Clearly we don’t mean going out and having a comparable accident! That wouldn’t be possible, desirable or ethical. Instead, seeing the location in person might offer up some form of useful understanding. The challenge is that many locations in the Railway Work, Life & Death project database are now inaccessible. This might be because they’re still on an operational railway, or because they’re now long-since gone.

However, where it is possible to get to a site, it does add something – albeit something difficult to pin down and make tangible. Perhaps it’s a sense of closer connection with the incident – akin to holding something once owned by one of the people in the database. This was something we discussed in this blog post a few years’ ago. On our trip to Aberystwyth, it was moving to pass through the location of Pontdolgoch station, long since closed, and think about Robert Stanbury.

There’s also a value in travelling on the routes, where possible. We can appreciate the terrain and settings, the challenges and constraints faced by staff in building and operating the railway. We mentioned that as we travelled to Aberystwyth, we live-posted the journey. In essence, as we passed through a station or location for which we had an incident, we shared the case so far as possible. This does two things. Firstly, it brings the route, its people and its stories to much wider public attention – always good to do, but especially so during Railway 200. Live-posting a journey is a really good way to explore the project database. It shows the variety of people and cases in the database, and the range of locations covered.

Before we look at the 1921 Abermule disaster, it’s worth looking at an earlier incident which also appears in the new records coming into the project database. We spotted it precisely because we were looking at the route along which we were travelling, through the lens of the accidents on the way.

 

A 1904 precursor to Abermule?

Single track routes – as the line from Newtown to Machynlleth was – presented operational challenges. Clearly trains meeting each other was and is undesirable on any stretch of line, but particularly so on a single track line. During the 19^th century elaborate safeguards and working practices were developed to prevent this from happening – so far as possible. However, there was often a way around this; not necessarily due to any wish to cause an accident, but through error of some sort.

This is what happened on 26 November 1904, at Forden station, between Welshpool and Newtown. Forden was a passing place on the line – a loop existed to allow services in opposite directions to bypass each other safely. Around 7pm, a goods train heading to Welshpool arrived at the station. This would usually have been directed into the loop line until a passenger service heading to Newtown had passed. However, the station master Edwin Corfield thought that he had enough time to unload some horses from the goods train – and that was more easily done on the line that the passenger service was scheduled into.

Corfield therefore instructed those involved to go against the safe operating procedure they were expecting. He did take some precautions – the signal controlling the approach of the passenger train was set to ‘danger’. But this wasn’t enough, as the crew didn’t spot it in time enough to act, especially in the foggy weather then prevailing. The two trains met head-on in the station – fortunately at relatively low speed. Five passengers were injured, as were Corfield and the fireman of the goods train, David Williams.

 

Why the crash? And what about the staff?

Since the 1840s, all passenger train crashes were subject to formal investigation, carried out by the Railway Inspectorate, a state body overseeing safety on the railways. These investigations were extensive, and a direct contrast to the relatively minimalistic investigations into incidents which ‘only’ harmed staff. The Forden incident was duly investigated, by E Druitt, with the report available here. Corfield was held responsible.

Interestingly, Corfield made the decision to put the goods train on the line where the passenger train met it because he was trying to help a local farmer get the horses home quicker. As part of that community, was he trying to help a friend, or a valued consumer? Is it possible to understand his decisions as part of being a ‘good’ ‘servant’ of the Cambrian Railways?

What we haven’t known, until now, is the details that the company had about the incident. Railway companies were meticulous documenters, particularly of operational practice and where they were required – as in the case of accidents – to keep records. Two volumes of accident records for the Cambrian Railways will be coming into the Railway Work, Life & Death project database later this year. In the first of those, we find the Forden crash.

From it, we have a brief summary of the incident, and information about the two Cambrian Railways staff injured. Fireman David Williams’ weekly wages amounted to 15/9 (around £105 now). As a result of the accident, he suffered from a shock and an injury to his left thigh. He was off work for 14 days, during which he received 10/5 in compensation (around £69 now).

Station master Corfield was usually paid £1.1.2 per week – around £140 at today’s prices. He was getting the final horse out of the horsebox when the passenger train hit. As a result he was thrown to the ground – one of the horses added insult to injury by stepping on Corfield’s head. He was off work for 27 days, receiving £1.6.5 in compensation (around £175 now).

This might be a relatively small addition to our knowledge of the 1904 Forden collision, but it reveals details that otherwise wouldn’t be known. Scale this up over the hundreds of other cases featured in this volume of Cambrian Railways accident records, the vast majority of which weren’t otherwise investigated or known, and we have a huge resource. It adds to our understandings of railway work and post-accident experience.

 

Abermule, 1921

Whilst the Forden accident differed in some significant ways to the 1921 Abermule disaster, both arose from some of the challenges of single track working. The technical aspects of the Abermule disaster are relatively complex, so here we summarise. The shortest version is that two trains met head-on, on a single track route. Errors on the part of one of the train crews and the station staff at Abermule meant that something which was supposed to be impossible – two trains travelling towards each other on the same line – happened. The consequences were tragic. Seventeen people died and 36 were injured.

The full report into the Abermule incident is available here. The Railway Inspectorate officer who investigated the accident, JW Pringle, didn’t mince his words in the report: ‘Such a tale of failure in broad daylight, and of misunderstanding on the part of so many men, would have been incredible, prior to the accident’ which was due to ‘Indiscipline and slipshod methods’.

Given the scale and rarity of the crash, it was headline news. This was a marked contrast to the everyday accidents which cumulatively killed and injured far greater numbers of railway staff. Lots of the public focus in any train crash was on the passengers, who found themselves in a situation not of their making and over which they had no control.

 

Staff in the Abermule disaster

The crash involved multiple Cambrian Railways employees. They appear in the second volume of the Company’s accident records that we’re working on bringing into the Railway Work, Life & Death project database. Again, they reveal details not commonly known, but which help to illustrate the impact of the accident on the workforce.

Three workers were killed. Driver George Jones, fireman B Evans and passenger guard E Shone died in the crash. The volume doesn’t record the compensation payments, but under the terms of the Workmen’s Compensation Act their dependents would likely have received £300 (equivalent to just under £40,000 today) per family. This was the maximum payment possible under the Act.

Guard E Chetwood was injured; he was off duty for 150 days. As a result he received £37.12.6 in compensation – around £2000 at today’s prices. Driver JP Jones and fireman J Owen had attempted to stop their train before jumping when it became clear that a collision was inevitable. Both survived; the volume shows that Jones didn’t have any time off work, receiving full pay and a £5 bonus. Owen was off work for 301 days; whilst he was off he received full pay and a £5 bonus. This went considerably beyond the requirements of the Workmen’s Compensation Act, presumably demonstrating the Cambrian Railways recognition of his error-free performance and a compassionate approach.

The other staff were travelling as passengers – driver E Humphreys and fireman JS Edwards. Humphreys was off work for 31 days, and received £5.5.0 compensation (now worth about £280). Edwards was off duty for 52 days, receiving £14.2.6 compensation (c.£750 today). That they received compensation is a little surprising – or at least, it’s unclear the route through which they received compensation. If this was through the Workmen’s Compensation Act, then it was construed that they were on the train as part of their work – might they have been travelling ‘on the cushions’ to or from a shift? Or did their compensation come by virtue of their being passengers, as presumably the dead and injured members of the public were also compensated?

One poignant artefact from the disaster survives in the Ceredigion Archives: a keepsake book, thought to have been compiled by a friend or family member of passenger guard Edward Shone. It comprises contemporary press cuttings about the accident, focusing on Shone. This blog post, by Ceredigion Archives, explores the book. It’s a fascinating survival, and means through which someone mourned their loss.

 

Remembering and Railway 200

How railway accidents – and particularly workers – are remembered is something we’ve considered before now, including in this blog post. Marking any incident is significant, and we’re obviously keen to see it happen. Sometimes the centenary of an incident forms a point at which it becomes possible to mark it – as happened with Abermule.

Which types of incident are marked in more formal ways, like a memorial or with some form of ceremony, is also worth noting. Most commonly they are the big passenger crashes like Abermule. They were most visible, at the time and since in the popular memory. However, it is also possible to remember incidents in which railway workers and no passengers or public were involved. This was the case in 2024, at Manton Junction in Rutland. Given the significant numbers of railway workers who were killed or injured at work, outside train crashes, we would like to see more remembrance of employees.

Railway 200 may present opportunities to do just that. Accidents are a challenging topic, especially to fit into a public-facing story of railway evolution. Yet they’re a crucial aspect of the railway’s past, and to overlook them would be to do the staff involved a disservice. Fortunately Transport for Wales have indicated their willingness to think about these difficult pasts and to include them in the Welsh Railway 200 programme of work. Obviously we’re delighted with this – and we’re looking forward to helping Transport for Wales with it.