I witnessed a runaway train many years ago. It was a class 25 (remember those?) and was pulling many empty (thankfully) 15t coal wagons. I watched as it rounded the curve in the distance and realised it shouldn't be there as the points I was near to were not set for it. The sight of it as it failed to negotiate the junction was a sight I will never forget. The noise of the wagons as they piled up behind it was not a noise I can accurately describe. The only saving grace was the fact it was my Hornby train set.
No room for modesty, I’m always singing your praises to my London based friends who use the Underground every day and, thanks to my recommendations, they have subscribed to your great channel.
Indeed. THAT is heroism - which I define as going far and beyond the duties you signed up for, while placing your life in immediate danger. Bravo, Sir.
Runaway train I was on, was a central line train whos automatic systems failed to stop the train at a station, somewhere Between North Acton and Greenford (I think). The train not only failed to stop but accelerated, with the carriage jostling relatively violently. Somewhere between stations, the driver intervened, with the train coming to an abrupt stop. The driver then apologised to passengers that missed their station and explained in child like terms what had happened. What stuck in my mind was the fear the speed as it accelerated might derail the darned thing. 😮
spunds more like the automatic brake trippers were utilized: they pop up if a grain goes through a signal like yours did…it’s the only way the train could have stopped if the driver couldn’t stop it from their controls
Any fear you had of the train possibly derailing might be in vain because 1: that stretch of line is pretty much straight; 2: as someone who travels on that stretch of line every day you wouldn’t have to worry about it crashing into another train because the frequency between trains would be the savinggrace
I lived in Totteridge 60 odd years ago, the steam trains ran daily to service the coal yards in what are now the car parks of all the stations from High Barnet to East Finchley, and then on Sundays occasional excursion trains to Southend from High Barnet ran.Yes we called them puffing billies, and they used to clank along between Totteridge and Woodside Park. The tube trains were 1938 stock then, with 2 no smoking carriages per train, a guard operating the doors in the last rear carriage, and they made a curious thrumming noise when stopped in stations. Also remember the strange smell referred to as Ozone as they braked between Highgate and Archway.
I loved the final shot through the window leaving the station. You haven't lost your flair for cinematography, or whatever its called with mobile 'phones'!
When I saw the title I immediately thought of the incident of the 13th August 2010. This incident started at Highgate when a makeshift coupling broke and ended at Warren Street where the runaway stopped on the rising gradient.
I grew up at High Barnet and remember that, in the 1950s and early 60s every station except West Finchley had a coal yard. These were supplied by coal trains hauled by N2s that ran from Finsbury Park several times a week and had to fit in between the Underground trains.
I had been out. There was a long list of videos in the notifications box, each more doom, gloom and disaster. Then a story about a runaway train, thank goodness. A bit of fun, a bit of history and some pictures of some trains. Perfect. Just what I needed.
I recall being told to make a "brake application" on the Great Central Driving Experience Day whilst driving an 8F. The supervising driver was obviously unimpressed, as he said, "slightly more brake", then "more brake", then "I'll take it from here"!
Fantastic - may I ask where? One thing the travelling public really don't understand (nor have need to) is the finesse required to correctly brake a loco + coaches - and frankly, it's a skill that's decreasing among more modern stock, which older hands indeed find "boring"! I fondly recall sitting behind the driver in an elderly (even then) Class 107, on a run from Chester to the Wirral. He'd left the blinds up and I was fascinated to see how he braked - made it look easy but smooth applications, no subsequent adjustments, complete mastery of his train and route. Total craftsmanship.
@TomCro73 It was many years ago on The Great Central Railway heritage line, Leicestershire. As the coaches were empty, we were allowed to travel at 40mph. It was an exhilarating - and as you say, physical - experience. I too recall travelling behind the driver of a 1st generation DMU whilst he had the blind up when I was a boy. I was fascinated. I think if I hadn't gone to university, I would have definitely been a train driver. Perhaps it's still not too late??
I used to use T&W station for about eighteen months a little while ago, when an estate gardener and have heard something about this incident in the past but knew nothing really, so it is really great to get more detail. thanx. I now volunteer at a community garden since retiring and we have our own trainset at the bottom, as our garden is on a slope. It's a goods branch between the main line out of Kings X and the North London Line ¦:¬)
Though another RU-vid channel has done just that about the runaway which did happen on the Northern Line under LT auspices at Archway in 2010 - an engineers train that ran through 6 stations with other trains being frantically told to miss out stops to keep ahead of it! The unintentional driverless train - sounds unbelievable, but true.
@@Jasper_4444 It was "Plainly Difficult" and is actually entitled London's Accidental Driverless Train 2010. (It was also reported on the BBC and other media at the time and an official accident report was written because of the potential danger.)
Train on fire at Totteridge, passengers alight at Kings Cross. I can surmise that the water sloshing back would have caused more steam to condense and in effect create a vacuum which suck even more water back up the tubes.Which in turn forces the steam back into the smokebox and back through the pipes to the firebox. You'd have thought somebody would have thought of that and put some sort of valves in to prevent it... . Adds new meaning to the train reaching the Terminal.
To come home to a picture of an N2 in photographic grey is something you don’t see every day. A railway disaster with a happy ending is something LTC Rolt somehow never achieved! Thank you for both and for a superb video!
Not quite true about Mr Rolt. The runaway at Braysdown Colliery in Somerset in 1936 damaged a lot of rolling stock and other railway equipment, but there were no deaths or injuries. And the collision at Aynho in 1852 was something of a farce too.
I think you should have mentioned that in the 13th century Totteridge was actually known as Tararidge.I thought I'd mention this before some of your more pedantic viewers pick up on this very unfortunate omission.
I should confess that following a pleasant encounter with Tara, t'was my ancestor that arranged for the name change - on the grounds that she was "Top Totter". Her father wasn't impressed; he was one of the original "gunners".
Having been born and raised in Finchley I found this video particularly interesting. As a child of the 1950’s it was the 1938 stock that I was used to and as a child I well remember watching steam haul good trains passing under the road bridge at Finchley Central and heading up the Mill Hill East branch. Before I was born I understand my grandfather used to take the train to work in the city from Finchley that went ‘over the top’ to Finsbury Park and change for Moorgate.
The one I'll always remember was the 1994 Piccadilly Line northbound out of KX which zipped through Caledonian Road and only came to a stop just outside Holloway Road. To this day I can't see Caledonian Road on the tube map without thinking about it; and in 2019 I made a special if circuitous trip specifically to ride the Picc on that stretch of track.
When I was a young guard at east Finchley depot motormen told me about a 38 stock that didn't have the rail anchor attached and ended up down the embankment at Barnet sidings ending up on the road
Many many moons ago my father tried to stop s runaway. A diesel electric train was left at Caterham station with the motor running and brakes not applied. It started to move itself and headed north. My dad was a goods yard supervisor at Norwood Junction and, notified of the approaching runaway, attempted to board as it past but it was too fast. That failed, dad suggested directing it up hill towards Crystal Palace and send a shunting diesel up behind to stop it rolling back the way it came. Quite a tricky manoeuvre 😯 Instead, the powers that be decided to let it hit the buffers at Norwood Junction's dead end platform.
Excellent as always - just over 100 years ago. This is my local railway. The incident took place on August 17th 1924 but it wasn't the only runaway train incident that year - there was the more serious Highgate Tunnel disaster further down the line.
I am a Barnetonian born and bred in High Barnet in 1949.So this is interesting to me thanks.One of my grandads drove the northern line tube based in the 1940s and retired in the 1950s at High Barnet.
Reminds me of a similar thing to a runaway train, when in February '75 Leslie Newson fell on the dead man's handle and accelerated the train into a dead end tunnel at Moorgate, platform 9.
Depends on where the waste steam is fed back into the tanks from. If direct from the cylinders, then no issues, other than the smoke still goes up the chimney. But if it's from the smokebox, then the blowback goes straight through the fire tubes into the firebox and blasts the contents of the firebox onto the footplate. What's inside the boiler is, effectively, a big bath of very hot water producing steam in the dome halfway along the boiler. The steam is then fed to the cylinders with a slider in the steam chest feeding it either to the front or rear of the piston, with the one on the other side halfway out of synch, so one piston being pushed by the expanding steam clears the other, then it returns the favour, and the entire shebang repeats but the other way around. There's various gubbins around the top, valve gear, controlling the amount and timing, so it can also run backwards.
There's a swear word removed I never noticed! and the ugly duckling was on the other side. I was shocked to see the single cover and remember it at 56 years old...
Makes me wonder who wrote that / what the roots of that song are as its enough to scare impressionable children off trains for life. Thank goodness my father got me interested in trains before I ever heard it...
One day with my club, we were riding on the narrow gauge railway. Most of us were in the last two coaches, but some including me were in the third coach from the end. We were going down hill when one of the train crew rush to the other side of our coach. We look back and saw last two coaches, several feet behind us. Luckily there was a nother member of the train crew in the last two coaches who used hand brake. No one was hurt and only lost was broken coupling.
I’m a Ex northern line driver, Drove the 1959, 1972 stock trains and had the pleasure to drive the old red 1938 stock. I can tell you a few story’s that happened in my time of service.😳
I'm fairly sure I am not alone in being absolutely fine with stories being shared. Don't suppose you have a helpfully alliterative name, like the late District Dave?
@blackydon well it is _now,_ but if you want to tell stories under a pen name that alliterates with Mordon, you cab _have another,_ too. Hell, go back for elevenses and write _thrilling crime novels_ under a third pen name! We won't judge you.
1:95 "... more like making a gentle suggestion to the locomotive, rather than actually operating it" - ah, the mystique of the steam engine. It's why they started giving them names to remove the anonymity of a number. "Firefly", "Vigilance", "Perseverance" (but whose?).
2:28 Well then (not an engineer but a student) challenge accepted! Surging into the pipes probably disrupted the vacuum effect in the smokebox. The condensing system likely wasn’t active on this open-air branch, but whatever air was in the pipes was probably pushed out by the surge of water, thus making the exhaust steam from the cylinders flow back through the boiler tubes instead of out the chimney. This also pushed hot air in the tubes towards the firebox. Firebox doors were often left open to increase the amount of air for combustion, on top of the air drawn in through the bottom of the firebox. Steam engines work on a positive feedback loop, in that exhausted steam from the cylinders blasting out the chimney draws more air in through the firebox. It’s why condensing engines can’t work for long periods, in addition to heating up water to make the injectors inoperable, the system is essentially the same as a locomotive holding its breath while doing work. In this regard, steam locomotives perform better as their speed climbs (to a certain point). Here however, the engine’s acceleration continued to send a decent amount of hot steam into the cab. Running out of steam wasn’t really an option either as the exhaust steam was still hot flowing backwards through the tubes, which in turn would keep water boiling without any coal added to the fire. Surging water is usually a problem for side-tank engines at high speed too, hence the later bouncing as the engine picked up speed. An N2 engine in theory is more stable at higher speed as the cylinders are in between the frames. For comparison, a Metropolitan A class has outside cylinders; good for torque needed to accelerate between stations but not good as good for stability at speed. Still, the issue with side tanks is that as water is used up, there more room for it to slosh around, which in turn can make the engine start lurching. Subpar track quality can make this oscillation even worse, and given the reputation of this service at the time…more than likely.
One of the songs off my latest album, fourteeen years, is called Runaway Train. It's about the classic philosophical dilemma of whether you allow a runaway to plough into a hundred people by doing nothing or whether you kill fifty people by the action of diverting the train onto a different line.
You say there's no way a runaway train could happen in modern times. See: 2010 driverless train on the Northern line. A problem with towing a broken down train, the runaway was released near archway? and rolled all the way back down the Northern line.
There was a runaway train incident during WW2 on the south coast of England. The Army had taken charge of a local train during the preparation for a visit of the King. Unfortunately the brake wheel had been removed by the civil footplate crew (to report a fault with the knurled inner face) and Private Pike was unable to bring the locomotive and train to a halt but did so eventually.
It looks as if your cheeky reference to that beloved '70s sitcom has received no notice yet, so here's a hearty "Haha" from a Yank in love with Walmington-on-Sea's Home Guard! "The Royal Train" is among my favorite Dad's Army episodes. I was saddened to hear Ian Lavender died this past February. 77 is too young an age to go, these days!
You channel is top class Boys Own magazine stuff what a tale you talk and it's all true but it leads me a'thinking with all the heritage steam about our green and pleasant land could a steam train today set of by its self.
This felt like a Jago Hazzard version of a Thomas the Tank Engine episode, complete with confusion and delay. All that’s missing is Ned the N2 Engine saying ‘I’VE GOT TO STOP, I’VE GOT TO STOP!’ as he raced down the line.
I rode behind dozens of those engines in my school days, but I had no idea that they could behave like that (I probably wouldn't have minded if mine had charged past my school stop!).
"It sometimes feels like making a gentle suggestion to the locomotive" - you're talking about injectors, surely. The Lucas electrics of the steam world. Always work perfectly when you don't need them...
I used to maintain my late parents' Austin A40, Morris Minor and Austin Metro and I have since 1986 owned a 1979 Leyland Sherpa, all with Lucas electrics except for the Ducellier distributor on the Metro. What is supposed to be wrong with Lucas electrics? They don't often go wrong and if they do you can repair them yourself at very low cost.
Reminded of the recent runaway train where the train it was catching only just made it out of the way. The driver asked all the passengers to get into the front coach
My aunt & uncle, at the time resident in Catford SE6, helped in the rail crash there. How about an episode about that incident? I know it's not the tube but it ties in with this one.
Quite recently the northern line had a runaway train, it was an engineering train that became uncoupled and went backwards, a passenger train was ordered to slip stations, luckily the up and down hills, it came to a fault.
“Judging his moment, Bowles scrambled into the cab and screwed the brake hard on. At last N2 stopped - both he and Bowles were very relieved!” I know that Christopher Awdry was more inspired by the Jazz trains apparently when he wrote “The Runaway”, but I did notice some parallels between this incident and the Thomas tale. Thankfully, the as-yet-uninvented helicopter wasn’t needed in this instance. Also, was fully expecting this video to mention the track machine that broke away at Highgate or somewhere and ran down the southbound line for several stations before coming to rest on a grade at Mornington Crescent. Footage from the control room’s tracker screen showed how close it came to running into another train. Pleasantly, we get another historical tale instead. Reminds me of a line in JH’s “What is Thomas” video: “People complain about train services now but it seems that things used to be a lot more hair-raising”.
Jago: "In fact with the safety systems in place on modern trains it's actually pretty hard to get a train to run away." M>Train, Melbourne, 2003: "Hold my beer (whilst I go and take a leak)!"
Dont worry, there is a sharp curve just before East Finchley station. The train would have jumped the rails and smashed into an electricity sub station that probably hadn't been built yet.
This line has a very tight curve going south just before Finchley Central. I have a feeling that if it had approached said curve going too fast, then it must have derailed, and although this would have stopped the runaway, it would not have been pretty.
I have a feeling that Christopher Awdry got the idea of this story for His railway series story The Runaway from his book More about Thomas the Tank Engine which was at the same time adapted into an episode from the second series of the TV show
For some reason I have three copies of “Red for Danger”… In it Tom Rolt calls steam engines chimneys “funnels” which I think is a hanging offence nowadays, but I don’t think there is a greater power to correct him (although my official driver’s handbook 1958 has chimneys).
@@Themclachlans Interesting, It was always a 'funnel' back in the day, indeed for me it still is - a boiler (any sort) has a funnel, a house has a chimney. Like truck/wagon, consist//rake/train etc. I guess fashions change. Perhaps a video for Jago.. The comments section would be good :-)
Yep a lot of the Awdrys stories were based on real life events and some tv eps were too such as Gordon’s crash in A Better View For Gordon was based on the Montparnasse derailment in 1895.
Events like these were the basis for quite a few stories. One Season 2 episode had a similar near-miss with a passenger train. A runaway freight very nearly ran into a departing passenger train, but slowed enough to take a siding…and crash into a barber shop.
I was reminded of The Runaway (also from S2), where Thomas manages to do just that because the relief fireman left his rather stiff handbrake off (and his regulator open apparently), and an Inspector has to swing onboard and screw on the brakes. Man, the Inspectors on Sodor do some absolutely mad stuff when trains go wrong… A Close Shave, the incident you mention, was based on an incident that happened in Hull; the engine overran the buffers and nestled itself happily in the wall of a concourse barber shop. Whether or not it was trying to stop a broken-away goods train causing a bigger disaster, like Duck was in A Close Shave, escapes me (it probably wasn’t).
Hi, putting this here as it is your most recent post. An idea for a video - stations which have changed their name the most times. I often travel to Box Hill and Westhumble station and always noted that some of the platform signs say "Box Hill and Westhumble" and some say "Boxhill and Westhumble". According to Wikipedia the names of the station have been - 1867 - West Humble for Box Hill 1870 - Box Hill and Burford Bridge 1896 - Box Hill 1904 - Box Hill and Burford bridge 1958 - Boxhill and Westhumble 2006 - Box Hill and Westhumble (Source - Wikipedia entry for "Box Hill & Westhumble railway station" Also, "&" is very often used instead of "and" , including the Wikipedia article ! Locally the name of the area (rather than station) is written as Box Hill although Boxhill is also seen. Any advances on six ? Thanks for the content, as ever.
A stirring tale of how a brave man, doing his duty, averted disaster. The catastrophes we failed to avert were that £40 then is over a grand now and the fact that "a brave man, doing his duty" now sounds so quaint, and, you know, so l a s t c e n t u r y.
Indeed. Never forget John Axon GC, who perished attempting something similar near Chapel-en-le-Frith in 1957. (And yes - did Mr Bowles ever receive an award? There was no GC or GM in his day, but surely there was something appropriate.)
I thought this was gonna be the story about the engineering train that ran away on the Northern Line not too long ago. There is CCTV footage of it running through Camden Town if you wanna check it out.
I am in my 60’s and commuted on the underground in the 1970’s. I still use the underground from time to time. Why therefore have I never heard of “Totteridge and Whetstone”! 🥴
