Ladbroke Grove

On 5 October 1999, a three-carriage Thames Train diesel unit (‘165’) collided with a First Great Western High Speed Train (‘HST’) at Ladbroke Grove, two miles outside London’s Paddington railway station. The result was devastation.

It has been established, (reported a barrister, opening the subsequent public inquiry), that a total of some 575 people were travelling in the trains. 31 people died in the crash or from the injuries sustained in it. 23 of the dead were passengers on the Thames Trains’ 165, 6 were passengers in the High Speed Train. In addition, the drivers of both trains were killed. Approximately 414 were injured, many very seriously. It follows that over 75 per cent of the passengers either lost their lives or were injured to a greater or lesser degree. The figures for the 165 are even more stark. The best estimate is that it was carrying some 148 people. Of those 23 died and 116 were injured. Only 6 emerged unscathed. 227 were taken from the scene to hospital. Many are continuing to suffer from their injuries and from the shock of exposure to scenes of horror and of devastation.90

The trains collided virtually head-on at a closing speed of about 145 miles an hour, and the destruction was horrific. The leading power car and the two leading coaches of the High Speed Train together with the leading two coaches of the 165 Thames Train were very severely damaged. Though the greater damage was to the carriages of the less heavily built Thames Train, the effects of the collision were compounded by the outbreak of a ferocious fire, in part caused by escaping diesel fuel, which completely destroyed the interior of one of the coaches of the High Speed Train.91With exit and communication doors

blocked, many passengers found that they were unable to escape from the wreckage. They were caught up in the fire and burned to death, or sustained terrible and disfiguring injuries. The extent to which the rescue services were able to help was similarly limited: nothing could be done to extract those caught in the most severely burning coach, and nothing could be done to extinguish the inferno which reduced the contents of that coach to a fine ash.

The Ladbroke Grove accident led to a crisis for the British rail system. There was a widespread belief that things had gone horribly wrong, not just at Ladbroke Grove itself, but also, and much more generally, for the railways as a whole. The result was a public inquiry established to explore not only the proximate causes of the accident, but also background factors. That inquiry (the quotation above comes from the transcript of its proceedings) reviewed the evidence, collected statements from, and cross-examined hundreds of witnesses, and reported its findings nearly two years later.92The implications of the collision (together with a number of other railway disasters) were to lead, in due course, to a major reorganisation of the UK rail network.

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