In 1921 a sequence of events took place at a quiet rural railway station in Mid Wales which was to lead to a terrible tragedy which was to reverberate across the British Empire.
“Remember Abermule” read notices in railway stations as far away as India for years after the disaster in which 17 died.
On the face of things, single-track railways such as that linking Abermule with Newtown were accidents waiting to happen.
But because of the obvious potential risks, a system of working had been developed which had proven to be extremely safe - the last train collision on a single track line to result in fatalities in Britain had been over 44 years previously.
On January 26, 1921, the staff at Abermule station, along with the crew of a local train, made a series of mistakes which, not critical individually, contrived to create the impossible nightmare of two trains going in different directions on the same piece of track and meeting head on with appalling consequences.
The story of the accident on the Cambrian railway is now being told in a book by David Burkhill-Howarth, of Tarvin, near Chester, who has tapped into a wide range of resources, including the memories of some local folk.
It is called “The Deadly Tablet” after the tablet, or token, which gave a train authorisation to travel on a particular section of line. Only one token would be issued for a stretch of single line, so in theory it would be impossible for two trains to be travelling along it at once.
Yet at Abermule station slipshod practices had developed among the staff. Instead of the tablets being handled only by the stationmaster or signalman, as the rules stated, anyone who was handy did so.
This led to a misunderstanding between the 15-year-old booking clerk and the acting stationmaster which resulted in a local train arriving from Montgomery being given back the same tablet it had arrived with.
The tablet issuing machine which was a failsafe to the whole system was overridden by the slack culture and the final, fatal mistake was for the driver of the “local” to fail to check, as he was required by the rules to do, that he had the right tablet for the section on which he was about to travel.
The upshot was that the local train left Abermule for Newtown with the wrong tablet while the express, carrying the correct tablet, thundered towards Abermule from Newtown.
The driver and the fireman of the express saw the smoke of the oncoming local and slammed on the brakes before leaping clear moments before the impact just south of Abermule at a point known as Red House Crossing.
Mr Burkhill-Howarth says an accumulation of separate mistakes were behind the disaster.
“There were incremental mistakes by four or five interested parties which, had they not occurred, or had occurred 10 seconds earlier, we would not be talking about this disaster today.”
And while lady luck was against Abermule that day, it is likely that after years of safe working similar rule-breaking practices had grown up at other stations, and that the Abermule disaster was a big wake-up call.
“It was very much a case of ‘there but for the grace of God’. I bet there were a lot of cold sweats on the brows as people thought about what they had done and times they had handed over the tablet and not bothered to check it.”
He has found some anecdotal evidence that there may still be elements of the story which have never been told. During his researches, for example, a local source mentioned to him that it was common for members of the Abermule station staff to be in the bar of the nearby Abermule Hotel keeping an eye out for trains, racing out when one arrived. This is, of course, only hearsay.
The burden of blame for the disaster was placed firmly at the door of the acting stationmaster and the signalman who were dismissed along with the rest of the Abermule station staff of that day.
What happened to them in later life, he has been unable to find out, but might include in a second edition should the information become available.
In bringing his first major book project to fruition Mr Burkhill-Howarth, who is 61 and retired, had a personal battle to fight.
“The main hitch was that I was diagnosed with cancer last year. My mind was not always in the best state for doing work like this. Having said that, it was good to have something which stopped me thinking about what the future might hold. I’m more or less in remission now.”
The Deadly Tablet is published by Tempus. It is softback, 124 pages, and costs £12.99.
Share this article:
What are these?