Accrington Railways - Robert Kenyon

hoped the First Lord of the Admiralty would speak with the Directors of the L & Y about this ‘well appointed’ shambles. ) 1878 January The Clerk of the Oswaldtwistle Local Board, Mr W. Gourlay, acknowledged being in receipt of correspondence from the L & Y, in answer to a letter sent in 1874 about the inadequacy of the facilities at Church Railway Station. He had pointed out that in the four intervening years the Board had been active in obtaining a site for the expansion of these facilities. In 1876 Messrs Meek and Thornley had been invited to visit Church to view two sites, one of which was in the Antley district, the other adjacent to Blythe’s siding. They had come and along with the Board’s Surveyor had inspected the Blythe’s site, but the Antley site was not seen, as they stated they would prefer to expand the site at Blythe’s. The Board’s Officers felt that in this they had been treated with a degree of discourtesy and ignored when it came to their participation in finding a site. In this correspondence ( dated the 9 th ) however, it was surprising to find that the Directors of the Company had decided to adopt the Antley site and to provide funding for facilities, which would bring the matter to a satisfactory conclusion. On the 19 th , the train from Manchester due in Accrington at 4pm, was descending Baxenden Bank and had reached Scaitcliffe Bridge when the locomotive came off the rails dragging the guard’s van with it. All the passengers were de-trained and walked to the station, none having been hurt. Delays amounted to one and a half hours, whilst a breakdown gang lifted them back onto the rails. February In their report to the shareholders the Directors of the L & Y mentioned no plans for the improvements to Accrington Railway Station. They had recently laid plans before Parliament, but a Watching Committee had reported that these did not include a timescale for any work to be done. On Friday, the 15 th , staff at both Rishton and Accrington Stations became alarmed when the 6:55pm train from Blackburn failed to arrive. It had been confirmed that it had departed Blackburn some ten minutes late and should have arrived in Accrington at 7:30, and this was a cause of some anxiety that in the dense fog some tragedy had occurred. What had actually happened was the train had incorrectly been put onto the Harwood Loop Line at Whitebirk Junction, and it was when the driver realised that he was not observing the familiar signals and was approaching Great Harwood he had stopped and made arrangements to reverse back to the junction to get back onto the Accrington tracks. The service was delayed by an extra 40 minutes. A goods guard, Mr William Greenwood, was shunting wagons onto the Scaitcliffe Bridge on Monday, the 25 th , when he was knocked over by a van which then ran over both his feet. He was taken to his house where Dr Booth attended to what were serious injuries. March In the early hours of Tuesday, the 10 th , a locomotive named ‘The Iron Duke’ was coming back down the Baxenden incline having banked a train up to Baxenden, when it derailed due to having been put onto the wrong lines. It took a gang of workers until 4pm to clear the tracks. Fortunately neither the driver nor the firemen were hurt, only shaken by their experience. July Just before mid-day on the 20 th , a serious accident occurred at Accrington Railway Station. At about 10:30am a goods train, from Skipton to Liverpool, came to a stand on the viaduct, when the signalman in the box controlling the Burnley siding, Napoleon Wroe, signalled the train to move forward. However, realising that his train was on the line leading right into the engine sheds rather than on the Blackburn line, the driver applied the reverser on what was a relatively modern locomotive, but although there was a distance of some 60 yards the momentum of the 40 loaded wagons pushed the engine into an inspection saloon parked inside the shed. The impact sent this carriage through the end of the building ripping off its four wheels. It finally came to rest with one end embedded in the earth the other tilted up over the front of the locomotive, which lost its buffers and had the footplate hand rails twisted and broken. Both the driver and his firemen had leapt from the footplate before the crash and were unhurt. Of the two workers who happened to be on the roof of the carriage whitewashing the upper part of the shed, one was thrown violently off after being carried along on it, whilst the other managed to grab hold of the timber roofing and escaped unhurt. The accident was caused when the pointsman had thrown the wrong lever and set the points onto the shed road. September It was announced the L & Y had started to replace their old passenger rolling stock with new carriages. These were being made up of sets of 4 carriages of mixed classes and a van. Two of these sets

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