It was going too fast. Everybody said so. The surviving passengers. And the handful of railway workers and Shrewsbury residents who saw or heard it thundering down the track in the night, moments before that terrible accident.

Eighteen died when the North and West Express from Crewe jumped the track on a curved section just short of Shrewsbury station on the Castle Foregate side of the town. A further 31 were seriously injured and around another 30 less seriously hurt.

The locomotive came to a dead stop within only about 100 yards from the point of derailment – less than half of the length of the entire train – and carriages telescoped into it in a ghastly mangle of confused wreckage.

Awful screams of women rent the air as rescuers dashed to help.

It was Shropshire’s worst railway disaster, and it happened exactly 100 years ago, shortly after 2am on Tuesday, October 15, 1907.

The King sent a message of sympathy; Lloyd George, the President of the Board of Trade, hastened to the scene to see the aftermath for himself; a Board of Trade inquiry was immediately set up at the Raven Hotel.

And the question that was central to the investigation was simple: Why was the train going so fast?

At the point where it derailed, it should have been going about 10mph as it pulled into Shrewsbury station. Instead it was going somewhere between 40mph and 70mph. The estimates varied but the general picture was the same.

It had also passed at speed through two danger signals.

The driver was Samuel Martin, from Crewe, who knew the line well. In the investigations that followed, he could not defend himself, as both he and his fireman were among the fatalities.

Martin was scalded to death. Remarkably, he had no broken bones. Nor did a postmortem find anything to suggest that he had been drinking.

The official findings of Lt Col HA Yorke, who conducted the Board of Trade inquiry, created deep resentment among railwaymen. His report comprised 44 closely printed foolscap pages.

He rejected the views of the inquest jury that the brake power had been “insufficient”, and placed the blame squarely on Martin and his fireman.

Colonel Yorke said he believed Martin had fallen asleep and, as the train picked up speed on the gradient, awoke, or was awoken, and then put on the brake and reversed his engine.

What was the fireman, Frederick Fletcher, doing while the engine driver slept? Well, Colonel Yorke thought it possible he too was asleep, but more likely he simply had not noticed that Martin was dozing.

After this finding, engine drivers and firemen held a mass meeting in Crewe. They were furious that Martin and Fletcher were being made scapegoats, and passed a resolution in protest, as did railwaymen in Liverpool.

The most likely explanation for the accident, they said, was brake failure, and this was supported by the fact that Martin had his engine reversed.

Some incidental details emerged from the investigations and newspaper reports. The train had left Crewe eight minutes late, but had made up almost all this time by Shrewsbury. It was raining heavily.

Fletcher, the ill-fated fireman, had joined the train to allow the regular man to go on holiday. Although it was not known exactly how many had been on the train, nearly 100 were believed to be on board.

Among the dead were four people from Shrewsbury. Three of them were members of the town’s postal staff – the stricken train was a mail train, but one which carried passengers too.

Stephen Hodgson, of Cherry Orchard, was 40, married, with six children. He was “a good husband and a model father”. Leonard Denham Bradley was 32, of London Road, the son of a former local newspaper editor. Harry Morris was 35, single, of Queen Street, and a veteran of the Boer War.

Antonio Colombotti, of Princess Street, was a partner in the firm of Peeny Bros and Co, ice merchants, and managed the Shrewsbury branch of the firm. A native of Bardi, Italy, he had been in England for about five years.

The newspapers of the day were full of survivors’ tales, such as that told by John Williams and his son Alfred, of Newton Green, Craven Arms, who were returning from a trip to Liverpool.

John told a reporter: “After leaving Crewe the train appeared to attain a terrible speed, and the rocking of the carriages was so great that we could hardly retain our seats, though in the fore part of the train. It increased to such an extent that at last I got up to look through the window, through which I was nearly pitched.

“I began to realise that something was wrong, and had hardly sat down again when the crash came. The next I remember was my son here getting me out from beneath the wrecked carriage. . .. For a time there was utter darkness. The hissing from the escaping steam lent an additional horror.”

Samuel Martin, the man officially blamed for the crash, was buried in a pretty spot under a sycamore tree at Crewe cemetery.

The truth about the Shrewsbury rail disaster of 1907 was buried with him.

By Toby Neal