It was the railway's Titanic. A horrific crash involving five trains in
which 226 died and 246 were injured, it remains the worst disaster in
the long history of Britain's rail network.
The location was the isolated signal box at Quintinshill, on the
Anglo-Scottish border near Gretna; the date, 22 May 1915. Most of the
casualties were Scottish soldiers on their way to fight in the Gallipoli
campaign. Territorials setting off for war on a distant battlefield,
they were cut down instead on home soil - victims, it was said, of
serious incompetence and a shoddy regard for procedure in the signal
box, two signalmen were sent to prison.
But startling new evidence reveals that the failures which led to the
disaster were far more complex and wide-reaching than signaling
negligence. The Real Story Behind Britain's Worst Rail Disaster - When
Truth Joined the Death Toll, exposes what really happened at
Quinbtinshill - and why.