Forty-two Tube passengers were killed after their train failed to stop at Moorgate station in the worst ever crash on the London Underground on this day in 1975.
Driver Leslie Newson, 56, also died after ploughing – without any apparent reason - into a wall at the terminus of the Highbury branch of the Northern Line at 8.46am.
The force of the 30mph crash was so immense that it caused three carriages to completely crumble up and sever passengers’ limbs with twisted shards of steel.
A total of 74 people were hurt on the train, which was later found to have had no faults and appeared to speed up as it entered the station at the peak of rush hour.
Newson, who was considered an unlikely suicide candidate, had carried on past the platform, into the tunnel and smashed through a sand barrier and into a brick wall.
The packed station, which is in the heart of the City, was immediately plunged into darkness as huge amounts of soot and sand filled the air.
Doctors and nurses from nearby St Bartholomew’s Hospital rushed to help dozens of police officers and firefighters in the 13-hour-long rescue effort.
Gerard Kemp of the Daily Telegraph, the only journalist allowed in the tunnel, revealed: 'It was a horrible mess of limbs and mangled iron.
'One of the great problems was the intense heat down there. It must have been 120 degrees. It was like opening the door of an oven.'
A police officer described conditions as 'like trying to work in a sardine can' with the twisted wreckage leaving barely a foot of space for rescuers to squeeze though.
And a firefighter told the UPI news agency: 'Many of the dead have been hit by coach wheels that ripped though the floor'.
Among the last of the survivors to be rescued was 19-year-old policewoman Margaret Liles, who had her foot amputated so that she could be lifted from the wreckage.
As she lay inside the mangled carriage, the officer, who had only joined the Met four days earlier, told her mother outside: 'I’m all right, Mum.'
She and Geoffrey Benton, 27, waited in the choking heat until 10pm before being freed by firemen, whom they both chatted with throughout the rescue operation.
Later, police chief Brian Tibbenham said: 'Their condition is remarkably good considering they spent the whole day face-to-face with dead bodies.'
A subsequent Department of the Environment report determined that the driver had caused the crash, but was unable to say why he failed to stop.
The investigation confirmed that the hitherto conscientious driver never applied the brakes, which had been faultless along with the signalling equipment and track.
The most puzzling revelation was that Newson, who had worked on the Tube for six years, had not even raised his hands to protect his face at the moment of impact.
There was no evidence that he was suicidal – and indeed had £270 in his pocket with which he had planned to use to buy a car for his daughter after his shift.
The coroner’s verdict was accidental death.
A BBC investigation later considered the possibility that he had lost concentration and confused the Moorgate terminus with the closed through-station at Essex Road.
London Underground, which until then had an exemplary safety record during its 112–year history, introduced a raft of new safety measures after the tragedy.
Among them was a system that came to be known as Moorgate protection, which stops a train automatically if the driver fails to brake at dead-ends.
Since the disaster, there have been nine crashes and derailments on the Tube network and only two deaths, both drivers.
London Underground, which is used by up to 4.4million people a day, has on average only one fatal accident for every 300million journeys.
The Northern Line spur was axed at the end of 1975, and the tunnels and Moorgate terminus is now used by a national rail line from Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire.
Friday 28 February 2014
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/-on-this-day--worst-ever-tube-disaster-as-43-die-in-moorgate-crash-172128948.html
