Talk:List of rail accidents in the United Kingdom

Article Approach and Criteria for Inclusion

Please use Level 2 headings to Distinguish specific arguments. Matt Whyndham (talk) 12:07, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Designation

I notice that some are rail crashes and some are rail disasters; and that the title of this article is rail accidents. Should there not be some agreed designation? I think the official title is that used for the article: the others are more media terms. Peter Shearan 07:07, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I have also begun to add some other accidents: the Hall's Road accident occurred on the L&YR when two electric trains collided; I cannot so far find any further info. The Elliot Junction accident is reported in this article I am using a 1911 Railway Year Book for the listings, and will get around to completing such articles as I can in due course Peter Shearan 13:22, 29 May 2006 (UTC).

the Hexthorpe accident is recorded here. I want to complete the list before attempting the articles Peter Shearan 12:36, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Following also now included, no articles:

• Radstock large amount of detail
• Stairfoot some information
• Newark ditto
• Winchburg short note only
• Round Oak Newspaper reports
• for Straffan see note in Ardclough

All the additions from the 1911 Year Book, although only those with more than 10 deaths have been included Peter Shearan 18:38, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

1900-1945

• Witham
• Grantham
• Elliot Junction
• Shrewsbury
• Pontypridd

Peter Shearan 05:34, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Qualification

Two years after the article was started, I have added a line to the introduction, to the effect that this is a list of accidents involving rolling stock, and not for example the Oxford Circus fire or King's Cross fire. Would a lethal fire involving a stationary train count as a rail accident? Would a lethal fire in a marshalling yard count as a rail accident? Should this list actually be called something like "List of rail crashes in the United Kingdom"? What list does the King's Cross fire belong to? Ashley Pomeroy 17:07, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

The aforesaid aren't "rail crashes" but are incidents of "rail accidents" (unless deliberate or sabotage), and are "rail incidents". It depends largely on what people reading the list would like to find. Personally, I would like to see a list of "rail incidents", which might or might not be sperated by category if the author would like. What do other people think? Nickg1980

I did mention this nomenclature above. I think that "incident" is perhaps too gentle a word - after all, a dog straying on the line would be an incident! I prefer the term used in the title, as I said above Peter Shearan 13:55, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

If you look at the RAIB Rail Accident reports [1], many of them are incidents (e.g. near-misses) but are reportable because of the holes in procedures that are revealed. Matt Whyndham (talk) 15:01, 21 May 2009 (UTC) Continuing the thrust of the argument, I think the Kings Cross fire should definitely belong in list of rail accidents of the UK. For the following reasons: a station is an integral part of the rail system; The cause can be traced to ownership and maintenance of legacy items, which is definitely a live issue in the UK rail industry -- understanding people movement in emergencies is a key tool of safety engineering in public transport.

The scope of "accidents" should be system-wide, and be relevant to the performance of the whole system, not merely the bit concerned with trains on or off tracks. Here for example, is the Department for Transport in their 2007 Paper "Rail Technical Strategy", which accompanies their White Paper Delivering a Sustainable Railway [2], talking about one of their main targets for the coming decade or so (my bold text):

An integrated view of safety, security and health: Improved detection of obstruction, intrusion and abnormal behaviour at all boundaries of the system, combined with better management of response to both safety and security threats and, in the long term, recognition of the need to reflect public health concerns in the rolling-stock surface materials and air conditioning [3]

In my view, this List of incidents, backward-looking as it is, should also have an eye to the future development strategy of the country. Therefore it should include events, such as security-related incidents or events at the edges of the system (e.g. crossings) that have a bearing on future work. Matt Whyndham (talk) 12:15, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Only Fatal accidents?

Is this page intended to only include fatal accidents? or can I add the three train-vs-car accidents which happened at Shiplake in the past 15ish years? --jazzle 19:22, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

I reckon that level crossing accidents should only be in this list if they killed or seriously injured somebody on the train. - Goose 19:32, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

There is precedent in the list for everything, accidents without fatalities and accidents without a link to a written report, even a brief one. The great bulk of incidents recorded are, however, linked to a quite detailed article, and that is the way it should be. Are those UK motoring accidents at level crossings more worthy of an encyclopedia listing than the large number of non-railway UK motoring accidents that occur every month? NoelWalley 19:44, 26 February 2007 (UTC) correction NoelWalley 10:14, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

a level crossing accident is still a failure of some part of the railway system, and therefore may well be significant, even if non-fatal. Matt Whyndham (talk) 12:07, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Criteria for inclusion in (World) List of rail accidents

There is currently a discussion about whether we should set criteria for inlcusion of accidents on the List of rail accidents page, and if so what the criteria should be. This is also likely to have an impact on what the criteria for inclusion (if any) should apply to this page.

The discussion is located at Talk:List of rail accidents/Criteria for inclusion, where your input would be most welcome. Thryduulf 00:43, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

That's the World list of accidents, right? I think it's a bit train-centric, rather than truly about the railway system. I've got some comments about the criteria for the UK list, and I'll stick them in this discussion somewhere. There are specific UK issues (e.g. industry fragmentation, missions of the various rail agencies) that need to inform this page, and the international page shouldn't set the criteria automatically Matt Whyndham (talk) 11:57, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Details of Specific Accidents

Railway crash articles and synopsis

(I've also asked this on the Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_UK_Railways page)
Working my way through the lists of crashes on List of rail accidents in the United Kingdom (in an attempt to make them more concise in their reading) it's occurred to me that, although not technically biographies many of the articles or synopsis could pose the same issues that are raised in Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons as some of those directly involved could still be alive - although most facts are taken from official reports etc, so the facts are not in doubt, there is still the possibility of 'sloppy wording' that could cause miss interpretation and thus controversial, contentious or even libellous content. SouthernElectric 09:58, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Do you have a link, SouthernElectric, for that "Biographies" discussion? (I went looking where I thought it might be, but didn't find it.) It does seems that anything but a straight quote from a published source might very well change word sense in a way that somebody involved in a life and death situation might find extremely objectionable -- particularly regarding those sentences which assign and quantify blame.

On a different subject, since you said you are "working your way through the lists", is it the intent that some links do not go to a Wiki page mentioning the accident? E.g., Pershore, Newcastle Central Station, Lewisham, Bishopstoke, Portswood. If it is the intent, perhaps some marker to show it's simply a link to the town, not to the accident? The Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway link is a good example of how such a tag could be useful, as the accident is described, it just that it takes five "page downs" to get there. Alpha Ralpha Boulevard 16:52, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

You can find the WP guidelines regarding living persons here. As for broken / bad links, I've not changed any of them (except were multiple accidents have occurred at the location), I've been more concerned with the description at the moment. Hopefully I'll be able to get back to the task in hand soon... SouthernElectric 17:06, 12 November 2007 (UTC) 17:12, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Cowden

There seems to be some confusion over the actual death toll of the Cowden train crash. Much of the list on this page seems to have come from here. This site states only five died, something which I do not believe. A 3.5MB report on it can be found here however surprisingly I could not find the official death toll. The Guardian states 13. Under the Cowden Station page I wrote a short piece about the crash, however there seems to be confusion over whether the death toll was 12 or 13, could someone clarify and update this page and the cowden one. Cheers.Nicksid 13:05, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Penmaenmawr August 1950

There does not appear to be any mention of the Penmaenmawr accident of August 1950 in which 6 people were killed on the Irish Mail sleeper service. This seems a major oversight in such a "definitive" list.

Roger

This is a wiki - go ahead and add the details, you don't even need to create an account (although there are benefits in doing so. Thryduulf 00:47, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Other

Correlation with Death Toll List

I've paired this list with the death-toll order list at List of British rail accidents by death toll. It would be good if someone could add entries from that list that aren't on here and vice versa. Thryduulf 01:31, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

In-line brief summaries

In each line that points to an info page, I have inserted a brief info summary. I have kept these summaries as short as possible to make the table easier to scan through for any desired bit of information, including trying to avoid line folding, so please no schoolmastery correction of grammar and style. Anthony Appleyard 09:21, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Your edits are horrible to read and are no where near encyclopaedic in their language. You may not want corrections of grammar and style but it isn't just your decision, if every wikipedia article was written in ungrammatical shorthand then no-one would read it. Truncating should not be a problem or a reason/excuse to use ungrammatical shorthand as each new line is linked to an info page, which is coloured blue or red depending on whether it exists or not.

Could you also please explain how "Collision with car on track" is shorter than "car went off road onto track, train hit it" because I can't.

If you have problems with truncating of articles then buy a bigger screen, don't damage the articles. JonEastham 22:01, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

"Collision with car on track" does not say that the car went off the road rather than over a level crossing.

A short summary in-line avoids the user having to go to the linked page toi get a rough idea about what happened.

I was not talking about truncation but line-folding.

Anthony Appleyard 22:20, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

We already specify if its a collision on a level crossing, so why does it specifically need to say the car left the road.

The majority of my changes were inline and did not result in line-folding, again if you have a problem with line folding, dont use crap grammar to make it fit, buy a bigger computer screen. Not everyone has a small screen. It would be better to have sentences that read right and that people dont have to fill the blanks in. Especially as this website is viewed by many different people of many different languages so making it make sense is quite important. I am aware it probably makes sense to you, but it probably doesnt make a whole lot of sense to someone who doesnt have English as a first language.

Whether truncation or line-folding, the majority of my points stand. If the information were written into shorthand sentences that are grammatical, then the problem your trying to prevent wouldnt exist. Most people who come to a list, come to it to find something specific and so would have an idea of what to look for (in this case it would probably a location of an accident and some idea of the year it occured, or some idea of what the accident was) So its not necessary to be too specific by putting things like "train hit it"

I say one more time, stop damaging articles!

JonEastham 22:38, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

One final thing, if being able to see through the list easily is a problem, and you dont want to have to go to each page on the list to see if its the one you want, try installing this: Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation_popups it allows you to see a summary of whatever the link you are hovering over has on it and many more useful things.

PS, you could also use bullet points ;) JonEastham 22:54, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Use Table?

Just wondering if this would look better as an actual table rather than a list. 17:13, 6 March 2007 User:Dommccas

• I tried it with the first section :: it made the resulting table sprawly and untidy. Anthony Appleyard 17:37, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Table Style

Call me a pedant, but I really do wish that we could stick with the "standard" table. I do not approve of customising the style of the tables in terms of colour etc. The normal table style is used on WP without any headaches. I was going to change the rest of this article into a table, but am now having second thoughts. Also, the issue of "width%" is not normally a problem. The current formatting looks awful, and we now have tables that have the same fields, but are different widths. How amateurish is that! The use of "width%" gives tables that always stay in shape.Canterberry 00:59, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Specifying width% causes waste space in one column and excess line-folding in another column and and makes the table too sprawly. Anthony Appleyard 06:33, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

The table looks awful. None of the columns align, the white background does not define the table well and the lack of spacing looks messy. If this is the best we can do, then I would prefer that we went back to the old lists.Canterberry 10:18, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with File:Hixon rail crash.jpg

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• That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
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This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. --01:45, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Listing of Suicides

I have noticed the addition of two recent suicides, and feel these are not appropriate for the list of rail accidents. In reality, around 3 or 4 people a week are killed on the railways through suicide or accident, and therefore we cannot possibly list each and every single incident of this nature.

Does anyone agree that 'person hit by train' incidents should not be listed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.202.100.140 (talk • contribs) 18:05, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Marden, 1969

Currently a redlink, I'd suggest that Marden railway accident would be a better title. There is much info to be found from links on the Marden railway station article if someone wants to write the article. Mjroots (talk) 18:13, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Good idea - the official report states "about a mile short of Marden", so I've changed it to Marden rail crash to fit in with the others, but nothing written yet. Goose (talk) 14:52, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Working on it in my sandbox. Will be my 500^th article when I release it later this month. Mjroots (talk) 13:55, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Criteria for inclusion

I know this has been discussed before but it seems to have gone stale... I would like to know definitive inclusion criteria. Further, I would like to see these shown at the top of the article, rather than buried in a talk-page discussion. This is partly to dissuade the IP editors who add every single trivial incident which involves a derailment in sidings or some silly motorist ignoring the lights at ungated and AHB crossings; it is also so we can clean up the list a bit. The thing we need to ask is: were these reported by (or would they have been reported by) railway historians who wrote one of the recognised texts on accidents (Malcolm Gerard, J.A.B. Hamilton, Geoffrey Kichenside, O.S. Nock, L.T.C. Rolt, Adrian Vaughan)?

Here are my suggestions. For an accident to be notable, and thus worthy of inclusion, it must be referenced and also satisfy any one of the following:

• passenger fatality
• train crew fatality
• change to working practices

These are initial suggestions. Let's discuss! --Redrose64 (talk) 18:59, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for raising this. I have had the same concern of late. Serious derailment & collision, possibly investigated by the RAIB could also be considered as entry criteria. Certainly excluded should be incidents involving pedestrians. I think there has to be an element of engineering failure/damage as well as loss of life on board. While exceptions might occur that could be included, the basic framework needs to include all of the above. Leaky Caldron 20:00, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Aren't RAIB obliged to investigate anything untoward including near misses? This topic was discussed at Talk:List of rail accidents/Criteria for inclusion over the last year, I must admit without conclusion as far as I could tell but there are some useful prospoals in there that could be carried over. NtheP (talk) 20:32, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

To my mind it doesn't need to be complicated - any accident that would meet notability requirements for an individual article can be included. Generally speaking, suicides and the like do not make national press, or if they do would only count as routine coverage, so failing the WP:NOTNEWS test of notability. The concerns Redrose64 has regarding the IP additions should be sorted by this. Looking at the current list, the top 9 do not have individual articles, and so could be removed.

If it is thought that an incident would meet the notability criteria then it should be redlinked in the list, as this may encourage someone to write an article on it.

I suppose another concern for the article at present is that the more serious accidents get 'lost' amongst the less serious ones. We could perhaps turn the list into a table so they could be sorted by various different criteria. Quantpole (talk) 20:55, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Isn't this the purpose of the List of United Kingdom rail accidents by death toll?GrahamHardy (talk) 04:29, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

I suppose it depends on what the purpose of this list is. Is it a List of rail accidents in the UK? Or a List of Notable rail accidents in the UK? If the former then everything can go in even those events which themselves don't meet WP:N and to be honest that's what I think is part of the use of lists, they allow some mention of events which can't meet the notability criteria. Events that are notable tend to get their own article and the category system acts as a directory of those. NtheP (talk) 21:26, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, I wouldn't object to the addition of events that meet some other specific set of criteria as well. But, I would have thought that incidents meeting the sort of criteria that is being discussed would normally also meet the general notability guidelines. I must say that I haven't really had any involvement with this page, bar the addition of Gerrards Cross tunnel collapse, so I don't really know the problems that are faced. Quantpole (talk) 21:50, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Any accident that involves the death of a member of the public travelling on the train should be covered. Suicides should not be covered unless the result in the death of traincrew or passengers who were not commiting the suicide themselves. Traincrew deaths (driver, fireman/secondman, guard) should be notable enough for inclusion. Serious on-train fires should also be notable enough. Accidents causing the death of track workers generally non-notable. Major freight train accidents should be notable enough. Other events taken on a case-by-case basis. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mjroots (talk • contribs) 18:10, 5 December 2009

"Accidents causing the death of track workers..." would include the Tebay rail accident, notable for several reasons including legal proceedings. User:HLGallon 18:21, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

• Amended comment to say generally non-notable. There is an exception to every rule. Mjroots (talk) 18:35, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

(got ec there) This is indeed worthy of inclusion, and would fall under "Other events taken on a case-by-case basis" as suggested by Mjroots. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:39, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I generally agree with the criteria for inclusion given by User:Mjroots. I'd expect any article listed here to be notable enough to justify having its own article. Most notable accidents would have been followed by a public enquiry and publication of a report. In stand-alone list articles such as this, notability is assumed, without being specifically stated in the title (see WP:SAL#Naming conventions). List of level crossing accidents also needs looking at. There are certain editors who think it's a realistic goal to have every minor prang included. –Signalhead ^< T > 20:40, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I have added all those accidents listed in Wilson Railway Accidents claiming 7 lives which did not previously appear on the list. I added six altogether. I have some questions though (apologies if they have been answered in the above):

• Should they continue to be added all the way down to 1 killed (or when should it stop) ?
• Should they be included if they are unreferenced (i.e. do not appear in Malcolm Gerard, J.A.B. Hamilton, Geoffrey Kichenside, O.S. Nock, L.T.C. Rolt, Adrian Vaughan) or does the death of seven make them notable ?
• Further to the above question, at what level of death does the 'unreferenced' criteria matter?
• Excuse me if this has already been answered but if they're on this list do they automatically warrant an article ? Or is that when the 'referenced' criteria applies...
• If they warrant both inclusion on this list AND an article then is a red-linked crash article (eg King's Lynn) preferable to just the location King's Lynn?

ThanksGrahamHardy (talk) 04:29, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

I've been asked directly, so here are my personal feelings.

Re first point: the number of fatalities does vary between reports, because some include traincrew whilst others list only passengers; some ignore those who died later of their injuries. Further, in the case of level crossing accidents, some make no distinction between road users and those on the train. Different reports of the Ufton Nervet rail crash at the time showed anything between 4 and 7 killed. Whilst the page you have linked does state "in which passengers were killed" three times, I'm not sure that it counts as a WP:RS - he states "I've transcribed the text as printed in the original, including any errors"; what he doesn't say is if he's made errors of transcription himself, so it might be better to go to his source, and cut out one level of error.

• One dead is one too many; any passenger or train crew fatality counts as a criterion for inclusion. However, level crossing victims, whether pedestrians or people in cars, are not to count toward the number of fatalities: generally speaking, they are in control of their own destiny, whilst people on board are not.
• Ideally they should all be referenced, but as I mentioned earlier, many will not be in the standard works, particularly recent events. The actual words that I used were "were these reported by (or would they have been reported by) railway historians", note the parenthesis. If Rolt et al had written or revised their book today, would the accident have been covered? This is unfortunately a subjective judgment; but coverage in a recognised national railway journal (such as The Railway Magazine) should count as a plus point. Careful reading of the works of these authors shows that they are selective: those included are not necessarily those with a high death toll, but are mostly those which brought about a change in operating practices.
• "unreferenced" means unreferenced. The number of fatalities does not enter into it.
• They do not necessarily warrant an individual article. A section, paragraph or sentence in an article dealing primarily with the line, station etc. may be enough. If that item is directly wikilinked (by which I mean that clicking the link takes you straight to the item and not to the page top), and the linked-to item is adequately referenced, there is probably no need to also have a ref in this article; however, that is not grounds for removal of existing references.
• A link to a location (eg [[King's Lynn]]) is not always useful in itself. Better to link to a railway-specific article (line, such as [[Fen Line]] or station, such as [[King's Lynn railway station|King's Lynn]]); or if there is enough material available for an article specific to the accident, this should be permitted. Articles do not need to be confined to one accident: consider Penistone rail accidents.

What I want to get away from is the utterly trivial cases of car drivers who don't know what red lights mean, or depot derailments whose sole result is that unit 150201 had to run in place of 150202 and the 09:15 ran at 09:25 - see WP:NOTNEWS. If we were to report road accidents to the same level that some editors wish to cover rail accidents, the servers in Miami would crash due to lack of disc space.

To this end I would like consensus for a set of bullet points which can go into the lede, in order to deter the triviamongers. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:26, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

IMHO, a high number of the post-1990 accidents in this list seem trivial compared to the pre-1990 ones. I would propose removing all the pedestrian crossing/level crossing accidents, unless the railway was found to be at fault and/or they resulted in fatalities to passengers on the train. Sad as they are, they occur all too frequently, and to include them all would render the article too big very quickly. Goose (talk) 19:57, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

We might look at WP:AIRCRASH and see if their criteria are sensible for our case. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:13, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Formal proposal

Per the discussions above and elsewhere it's time to nail this down. I'd like to put forward a formal proposal for discussion and to see if consensus can be reached.

Notability criteria

An accident shall be considered notable for inclusion if it results in...

1. The death of a member of the public travelling on the train.
2. The death of a member of train crew (driver, fireman, secondman, guard, travelling ticket inspector etc)
3. Changes in operating practices

Generally, an accident shall be considered non-notable if it results in...

1. The death of a person intent on committing suicide or someone closely associated with that person (unless it also involves the deaths of other members of the public / traincrew)
2. The death of a member of the public crossing the line, not intent on suicide.
3. The death of a track maintenance worker or lookout

(There may be occasional exceptions to these criteria, to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis)

An accident may be considered notable if it results in...

1. The death of a member of railway staff who is not train crew or track maintenance staff
2. The death of a member of the public not engaging in a railway-related activity

(To be dealt with on a case-by-case basis)

Discuss. Mjroots (talk) 11:45, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

• Support as proposer. Mjroots (talk) 11:46, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
  
• Support – HLGallon (talk) 12:15, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support – Goose (talk) 08:55, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support – EdJogg (talk) 11:11, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

  Comment – At Watercress Line I added details of a minor derailment incident of a service train that resulted in a formal RAIB investigation and subsequent corrective action by the railway. (The report is on-line and is an excellent reference work for the article!) I know this incident is a little off-topic here, but it was notable within the context of the MHR. It would never exist as a stand-alone article, nor be likely to feature in any national lists, but it is still valid encyclopaedic content. Just wondered if there was any need to mention such incidents alongside the other criteria? -- EdJogg (talk) 11:11, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

  As an item within Watercress Line it should be judged against the criteria/context/conventions for that specific article. I am assuming that the derailment in question is Derailment at Ropley, 2006; if so, I would say that it was not notable enough to warrant inclusion here as well. The RAIB get called in for d**n-near anything. The "corrective action" you mention above seems to be the RAIB telling the railway to read the rule book, and to work by it - there's nothing here that hasn't been recommended at some time in the past. All railway staff should read Tom Rolt's "Red for Danger". It's by not following the rule book that we got Abermule 1921. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:37, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

  I quite agree. I think the point I was trying to make is that there will be incidents that are of encyclopaedic value that would never warrant their own article, and would not be expected to appear in a list such as this. (Hence a possible need for a comment to this effect, to fully define the scope of the list.) -- EdJogg (talk) 12:10, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

• Comment "Changes in operating practices" should possibly be amplified to stress that a general change was called for, as opposed to a railway being lax about implementation of existing recommended practices. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:37, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose - I think the list of criteria written are excellant but addresses the wrong topic. The criteria as written the notability criteria for deciding if an incident merits its own article but should not be the criteria for inclusion in a list of article. List articles should be just that, lists. Not subjective by reason of some artifical criteria but objective and encompassing of all subjects within that arena. Of course in Wikipedia terms there are other factors to apply; Citing Sources, Reliable sources and NOTNEWS to name but three and without those being met then an incident should be omitted. You might think I'm setting a low bar and I am, a list of railway accidents is accepted as being notable (otherwise this article would have been delted long ago), to therefore then set a secondary notability test for inclusion in that list is, to me, wrong. To those who would say that I am allowing/suggesting emphasis of the trivial I would quote Rolt's opening paragraph from Red for Danger in my defence:

A railway accident is always news. Governments may fall or battles be fought and lost but no matter what the crisis of the hour may be, a derailment or collision involving a relatively small loss of life will be sure to command a banner headline in the popular Press. All but the most lurid of road accidents pass without remark, but even the derailment of a few goods wagons involing no fatality or even injury will generally make a small paragraph in the news columns. Generations of railwaymen have complained with reason that such publicity is misleading; that it tends to obscure a safety factor so high that there are, in fact, few safer places on earth than a passenger compartment on an English train. But such publicity is, in part at least, the price the railwayman pays for efficiency. If railway accidents were as frequent as road accidents they would soon lose their news value. We should hear a great deal about 'the toll of the rail', no doubt, but individual disasters would cease to receive so much space.

Written in 1955 I would say that the principle stated here is still valid today and encylopedic coverage of railway accidents would show that they are rare and that railways remain safer than the roads. Wikipedia isn't here solely to record blunt numbers of railway accidents but to show that their rarity is what makes then notable and worthy of inclusion, even if only in brief mention. NtheP (talk) 11:55, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Comments Thanks for the input. One way to cover the lesser accidents is to mention them on the articles about the lines and stations that they occurred on/at - South Eastern Main Line and Tonbridge for example. There are examples of lists on Wikipedia where an entry is not made unless the entry is supported by an article. I'm not saying that in this case we should go that far, but an accident notable enough to sustain an article is a good start. Maybe the inclusion of a notable enough accident will spur someone to create an article on the accident itself if it doesn't exist. There are scenarios not listed above, which may or may not be sufficiently notable for inclusion. These can be taken on a case-by-case basis. For example, the collapse on 27 January 2009 of a bridge at Stewarton, causing the derailment of a freight train isn't currently mentioned in the list. I'd say that it was notable enough for inclusion, others may disagree. IMHO, a particular problem is the addition of accidents on level crossings and other public crossings of the railway which involve the death of motorists and pedestrians. The vast majority of these are not notable, and do not deserve to be mentioned (there are a few exeptions, such as Ufton Nervet and Lockington where rail staff and passengers were also casualties). I think Nthep is putting the bar a bit too low, but that is what this proposal is for, to see where the consensus is. Once we have established an agreed set of criteria, accidents not meeting those criteria can be proposed and discussed on this talk page to establish if there is consensus for inclusion or not. Mjroots (talk) 13:39, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

• Comments (as I can't boil this down to a single support/oppose). There are some good criteria here for what should be included on the general list, but I think what we need is two parallel sets of ciriteria
  1. Which incidents merit inclusion as either a standalone article or as a section in a larger article. This should possibly follow the model of WP:AIRCRASH (note I was a the most significant author of these revised guidelines)
  2. Which incidents should be included on the general list of rail accidents in the United Kingdom, and which belong only on more specialised lists (e.g. List of level crossing accidents in the United Kingdom) if anywhere (the specialised lists will have their own criteria, and could be sections of articles rather than standalone lists, e.g. Tramlink#Accidents and incidents).

I think the proposed criteria would work well as a basis for the second of these, and with some tweaking to set the bar higher, for the first. I do think though that there should be mention of those accidents/incidents that result in significant damage and/or changes to the infrastructure - for example the bridge collapse at Stewarton linked above and the derailment at Ely, Cambridgeshire that demolished a bridge [4] should be on the main list.

Also, I think that the accidents at Grayrigg and Hatfield would have been considered notable even if there were no fatalities, so we need to make provision for cases such as that. "Trains that derail and significantly deviate from the alignment or confines of the track" would certainly cover Grayrigg, Stewarton and Potters Bar, but I'm not sure about Hatfield. Thryduulf (talk) 01:32, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

• • Can we consider this as a consensus, all this time later? Mjroots' proposal as amended by Thryduulf's comment, seems like a good way forward. --John (talk) 04:23, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

WP:RAILCRASH

WP:RAILCRASH has now been adopted as a guideline. I'm minded to propose some entries in this list for removal, subject to consensus for same. Mjroots (talk) 07:16, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

• Fully support your proposal in line with WP:RAILCRASH. Leaky Caldron 09:13, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

• We may have to hang fire, an editor has objected to the adoption of WP:RAILCRASH as a guideline. It may have to be returned to the status of a proposed guideline while further discussion takes place. Mjroots (talk) 10:04, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Fatality totals

An IP user, I suspect the same one, is adding in 10 year totals for fatalities. I'm not really in favour of this for two reasons. 1) It smacks of ghoulishness but more importantly 2) It's always going to be inaccurate unless we have every fatal accident listed and in the imperfect world of Wikipedia it's an inaccurate statistic that risks getting used elsewhere. I'm for taking the figures out but would like to hear other views first. NtheP (talk) 18:12, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree. Unless the figures come from a reliable source they are WP:SYNTHESIS and therefore should go. -- Dr Greg  talk  19:48, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Adding deaths in each period is to show how the railway in UK has become progressively safer over the decades of improved rolling stock, signalling etc. (this info not otherwise noted on this page). The death toll is no more (perhaps less) ghoulish than the List of United Kingdom rail accidents by death toll? Agree with second point but that could be applied to any Wikipedia page with data on it? P.S. updates were done in good faith and an 'IP user' is no less an editor than another? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.164.99.20 (talk) 21:01, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

British railways have become safer but raw unreferenced figures are not the best way of showing that and this page isn't necessarily the best place to discuss that - an article on Safety measures on British railways might be needed to do that topic justice. I quite agree with you about List of United Kingdom rail accidents by death toll - left to me that page would be deleted. I never assumed you weren't acting in good faith that's why I listed the topic for discussion here first before acting. NtheP (talk) 08:47, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

To be clear, adding up totals for the 10 years would not violate WP:SYNTHESIS which specifically allows 'routine calculations' (see WP:CALC.) The point about reliable sources would appear to uncited figures themselves, not just totals created from those figures. Do however see below for my table suggestion for this article which will make it easier for people to calculate various totals. PeterEastern (talk) 15:01, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

1957 accident not listed

According to this http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2272229 there was an accident on the ECML near Welwyn Garden City in January 1957 in which one person was killed and 25 injured. But there's no mention of it on this list. Is this an oversight? G-13114 (talk) 08:59, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

It depends. The accident happened and is well documented but currently it doesn't have a separate article on here. NtheP (talk) 19:32, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Added accident to list. Not all accidents listed here have their own Wikipedia page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.164.99.20 (talk) 21:15, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Newport Docks - Rail accident?

The 2011 Newport Docks 7th Jan 'rail accident' didn't involve anything to do with railway operations (the locomotive was being taken out of the hold of a ship) so does it really belong in this page? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.164.99.20 (talk) 18:57, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Agreed I removed it. I think a lot of the ones on here could be removed as they don't involve railway operations.G-13114 (talk) 21:44, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Leighton Buzzard - accident?

The latest entry on the list relating to the unfortunate death of a passenger on a LM train on 11 April 2011 is now being reported in press (e.g. here and here) as non accidental and a possible suicide. As such should in remain in the list? NtheP (talk) 10:28, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't seem like a rail accident so I'd say it doesn't belong here, it is an unfortunate suicide that happened to be done on a train. There are many of these contributing to "About 200 to 300 people are killed on the UK's railways every year" - From http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11014520. Perhaps list should be limited to accidents involving errors or omissions in train operations rather than accidents/attacks/negligence/suicides that take place on the railway. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.164.99.20 (talk) 15:04, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Accident 12th July 2011 - notable here?

This recent tragic accident would appear to be persons on the line hit by a train - is this notable here? See story at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-14142324 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.158.169.102 (talk) 10:55, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

There are several other man hit by train stories already, so probably. -mattbuck (Talk) 11:05, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Which others? I think this (and they) should not be included - See above "About 200 to 300 people are killed on the UK's railways every year" - From http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11014520 If all are included then this list becomes more subjective, potentially huge and not a list of rail accidents, it becomes accidents that happen to take place on railways. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.158.169.102 (talk) 11:15, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

I agree with the anon above me. Incidents of people getting hit by trains when they are on the train lines are sadly very common, and the vast majority of them are no more notable than the incidents of people getting hit while on or adjacent to a busy road. Incidents like that at Elesenham a few years ago that attracted significant press coverage and was in a large part responsible for a class investigation of level crossing safety by the RAIB are worthy of mention, but not this sort of event. Thryduulf (talk) 12:17, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Using a table?

I am aware that there was a discussion about tables, and am attempt to switch to table format back in 2007. Can we look at this approach again, this time spending a bit longer thinking a bit about how to simplify the section headings. Here is a suggestion, which also uses the classification system proposed in WP:RAILCRASH. I am suggesting this change because I have found the article very impenetrable and can't find the patterns I am looking for. Using a sortable table might also make it possible to merge this article and the very similar List of United Kingdom rail accidents by death toll. Notice that the table can be sorted by year, by number of fatalities, number of injuries or the classification. The text in the 'details' column would remain exactly as with the current article. To be clear, all crashes would be in a single table, allowing it to be sorted my 'most fatalities' or by the reason. I suggest that we may be interested in expanding the classification coloumn significantly to include 'going to fast', 'suicide', 'collision at level crossing due to actions of 3rd party' etc. Lets however keep that discussion it latter. This is purely to establish if a table would be a good idea. Any thoughts? PeterEastern (talk) 14:02, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Also... the question I came to this article to get an answer to was 'how many people have been killed on the railways between 2000 and end 2010. You can see that it is more time consuming to get that information using the current format. With a table it would be easier especially since one can often cut/paste a wiki table into a local spreadsheet for further analysis. On a Mac this is possible using Safari, but not Firefox or Chrome. PeterEastern (talk) 14:17, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I think tables are certainly preferable for these types of lists. I like the table you've done above, although as we have exact dates for each incident we should probably include those in a date column rather than just having the year. --Pontificalibus (talk) 14:31, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Great. Thanks. I have independently converted years to dates, the only small issue with doing that it that the dates will need to be in yyyy-mm-dd format to sort properly. I guess that is OK for a British English article, but sure how it would go down with North American English articles (but that is not a problem for us). PeterEastern (talk) 14:41, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

We could use Template:Dts, which can be seen in action at List of accidents involving sports teams.--Pontificalibus (talk) 14:49, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Good idea, wasn't aware of that option. I have added the date coding as suggested in the sample table below which makes the displayed date field longer but also makes it clearer and keeps it sortable. Lets wait a bit longer for feedback, but this now seems pretty much 'good to go'. PeterEastern (talk) 15:08, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Agree. It's a lot of work tabulating everything so let's wait to see if there any objections.--Pontificalibus (talk) 15:52, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Compared to participating in stupid edit-wars it is remarkably speedy actually. I have now converted 1980-present into a single table. It seems to work well and has allowed me to answer the question that I came to the article for, which was the number of deaths since 2000 and where they occurred. I will continue working my way back through history. Not sure if it will work as a single table - I will try it because the sorting will work best if it is but it may get too much for some browsers. Lets try it and see how well it works. PeterEastern (talk) 16:33, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Regretfully there is a limit on the use of Dts in a single article after which one gets Error: total length format strings #time exceeds 6000. I suggest we use Dts for a table from 1970-present that will sort properly, and then use yyyy-mm-dd format for the rest of the article without dts. PeterEastern (talk) 17:20, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Split into separate articles? -mattbuck (Talk) 18:02, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I would prefer to keep it all together and the best answer would probably be to fix the error at source. For now I will continue converting the content to a table and we can then decide on any splits at that point. However... no one seems to disagree with using tables. PeterEastern (talk) 18:20, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I have now completed the tabulation of the data. It does seem logical to split it into sections to match the main periods in related articles (Privatised railways since 1995, British Rail from 1948-1995 etc). PeterEastern (talk) 02:36, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Lets keep discussion above this line so that it is easier to follow

Example table

Date	Killed	Injured	Type	Details
31 July 2011	1	0	A1	High Speed 1, Westenhanger, Kent, An Albanian man jumped out of Eurostar's 1704 London St Pancras to Brussels service as it approached the Channel Tunnel. He pulled the emergency handle, and then forced the door open and jumped out before the train could stop. The man was believed to be 22 years old, and had arrived in Britain earlier that day only to be refused entry. Police stated that his unaccompanied departure from the country was "voluntary" and that they were not treating the death as suspicious.
12 October 2011	3	0	B2	Milliken Park, Johnstone, Renfrewshire, 12 October 2011: A couple were struck and killed at around 2020 by the 1943 service from Ayr to Glasgow Central. They were attempting to cross the tracks to reach an opposite platform when they were hit by the speeding class 380 EMU. Nine days later on 20 October 2011 a man was killed in the same location at around 20:40 when he was hit by the 19:43 Largs to Glasgow Central.
25 September 2011	0	2	D1	Fen Line, Saddlebow, Norfolk, 25 September 2011: First Capital Connect Class 365 Networker EMU 365532, forming the 1010 service from Kings Lynn to London King's Cross, hit a tractor towing a trailer full of vegetables on a level crossing between Kings Lynn and Downham Market. Both drivers required medical assistance, but none of the roughly 40 passengers were injured. The front of the train was damaged, as were two overhead line support stanchions.
27 July 2011	0	0	D1	West Coast Main Line, Edinburgh, 27 July 2011; First ScotRail Class 170 Turbostar unit 170393 derailed at Princes Street Gardens between Edinburgh Waverley and Haymarket. The front four wheels of the last carriage derailed - the investigation is set to focus on a set of points the train had just passed over. Neither the driver nor the conductor were injured, and the line was reopened fully at 4:30am on 29 July 2011.

Cleanup drive

Can I suggest that we now do a bunch of clean-up work on this article on a section by section basis. Many work would be to:

• Create an introductory paragraph for each section
• Put 'fact' tags against every entry which has no citation at present
• Try to replace every fact tag with a suitable citation
• Check facts in each entry for consistency with any main article for the subject - there are some discrepencies that I have found
• Consider removing any entries where we can't find a suitable citation
• Remove any entries from the table that appear to fail on notification grounds as proposed in WP:RAILCRASH. Some of these may reasonably appear in a introductory paragraph for the section.
• Check the totals for each section against some reliable source for the total killed allowing us to sign off the lists as being complete for all reasonable purposes?

I am happy to do one section, but not the entire article. Is anyone else up for doing other sections? if so which one would they prefer? Do place your name against one of the periods!

1. Post 1995 : name?
2. 1949-1994 : name?
3. 1922-1948 : name?
4. 1830-1922 : name?

We should also check off this list against the List of United Kingdom rail accidents by death toll. We can then consider merging that article into this one which would simply be a matter to adding a summary of the worst events to the lead for this article. I have already checked all the accidents with more than 20 deaths for inclusion in this article (one was missing).

-- PeterEastern (talk) 03:08, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Good suggestions. Date formatting also needs to be cleaned up. Trim out any that fail the criteria for inclusion. --John (talk) 04:20, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

We have a simple choice regarding dates - either we put them manually into something that reads well, ie. 20 January 2010 and the sort will fail, or we leave it as digits (2010-01-20) and it will sort properly. In the longer term someone might sort out the bug in the Dts template (described above) which stops it working properly for long lists. We seem to have no takers for a formal dividing up of the cleanup work - I guess people will do bits and pieces in the normal Wikipedia way! PeterEastern (talk) 08:43, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Possible merge from 'List of United Kingdom rail accidents by death toll'

I have now completed a sweep through List of United Kingdom rail accidents by death toll and come up with the following additions for this article, not all of which have citations. I will now add them to the article with suitable tagging and references. When we have done this I suggest we raise the suggestion that the other article becomes a redirect to this one.

• Port Eglinton Junction, Glasgow 6 September 1934; 9 killed, 11 injured[6]
• Leighton Buzzard, 22 March 1931; 6 killed, 26 injured[15]
• Accident at Ystrad Caron level crossing, Tregaron, Wales, 5 May 1953; 6 killed
• Dunmurry train explosion, 18 January 1980; 3 killed, 5 injured
• Chumhill railway accident, 26 March 1913; 2 track workers killed; 2 injured
• Chapel-en-le-Frith rail crash, 9 February 1957; 2 killed
• Helpringham Fen rail crash, 6 December 2004; 2 killed
• Pollokshields East, Glasgow, 11 June 1974; 1 killed 4 injured
• Braunton Road railway accident, New Years Day, 1910; 1 track worker killed

-- PeterEastern (talk) 09:38, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

I have now added these to this article. I will raise a merge request on the other article. PeterEastern (talk) 09:51, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Fatalities in 2010

According to a BBC article yesterday 'There were six deaths last year (not including suicides or trespass) on Britain's train network, according to the Office of Rail Regulation.'[5] We have only 1 in this list. Any ideas how to source the rest? PeterEastern (talk) 21:25, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

They are possibly track side workers who died while on the railway? Their deaths are perhaps not as notable to the mass media as the death or injury of train crew, passengers, suicides or trespassers. Possibly source info from specialist rail related magazines, rail union websites / press releases and the like? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2ghoti (talk • contribs) 13:54, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Date formats in the tables

There is a limitation in the template {{dts}} used in the tables. If within the templates the dates are written in the format {{dts|format=dmy|yyyy-mm-dd}} then after 88(!) uses of the template on a page an error is generated. The solution is not to use dashes but pipes instead; so the example above becomes {{dts|format=dmy|yyyy|mm|dd}}. Note format=dmy should still be used even if one or more of the date parameters is missing. All the dates in the tables have been updated to use pipes. NtheP (talk) 16:33, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

What's the criteria?

What exactly is the criteria used for inclusion on this list? At the moment it seems to have become a dumping ground for every minor incident that would barely qualify for inclusion in a local newspaper!

I propose that any accidents should only be included in this list if:

1. They were serious enough to warrant their own article.
2. Involved fatalities or a significant number of injuries (more than ten as an arbitrary cut off point).
3. Are referenced.
4. Had some other significance like causing a change in operating practices.

Does that sound like a reasonable set of criteria? G-13114 (talk) 18:31, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

You might want to look further up the page, this has been discussed before. NtheP (talk) 19:21, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Ok I've decided to be bold and removed scores of trivial unnoteworthy accidents per WP:NOTNEWSPAPER. G-13114 (talk) 20:06, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

I've reverted as the mass deletion seems to have thrown the baby out with the bath water. I don't disagree that many could be removed but some fitting your very own criteria for inclusion have been deleted (e.g. 2 deaths on RH&D railway). Leaving only 1 1/2 hours between posting your proposal on the talk page and deciding to change the article seems a bit quick as one neutral (and constructive) reply on the talk page for such a definition of what should be included isn't really a discussion.

I agree that a large number of incidents do need to be removed, as they degrade the quality of the article by making the significant incidents harder to find. I broadly agree with the criteria suggested by G-13114, but would suggest phrasing it "1 OR 2 OR 4", and rephrase 2 as "Involved multiple fatalities and/or serious injuries". This would exclude "run-of-the-mill" suicides and level crossing incidents.--Pontificalibus (talk) 10:46, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Accident Returns link

I've added an additional field in the post 1995 table for including a link to the 'official' reports (or archive sites that have them) into the incidents, I hope this acceptable :)

Sfan00 IMG (talk) 09:53, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

As they are being, correctly, used as references why aren't they left in the normal place i.e. after the text? Either that or all references are removed to this additional column. And while we're on the subject of the table format - what is the purpose of the column named type? There isn't a single entry in this column.

I'd put them in a sepeate colunm as they are links to the 'offical' reports (or mirrors off) as opposed to news-reporting.Sfan00 IMG (talk) 14:01, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

It's true they are official reports but in Wikiepdia terms they are still naught but references and I don't see a need to treat them any differently from any other source. NtheP (talk) 14:26, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Feel free to merge away then :) Sfan00 IMG (talk) 14:48, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Let's wait and see what anyone else thinks first - i could be in a minority of one here :-) NtheP (talk) 14:57, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Time to split?

The article has now topped the 100,000 character size. In line with WP:TOOBIG is it time to consider splitting this article into one or more smaller articles. Perhaps List of rail accidents in the United Kingdom in the 19th century, List of rail accidents in the United Kingdom in the 20th century and List of rail accidents in the United Kingdom in the 21st century? NtheP (talk) 16:46, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Before considering a split, we could do one thing straight off - remove anything that's unsourced. If that's not sufficient, we then tighten the criteria (or even enforce the existing criteria, if we have any), see discussions further up. It seems to me that we have too many non-notable incidents - nobody killed, one or two people injured; there are even some (such as Maidstone East railway station, 6 September 1993) where nobody was hurt. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:44, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

As per Redrose, imho the length of this list stems from the failure to agree upon criteria for inclusion - see Mjroots' creditable attempt here - Wikipedia:Notability (railway incidents). Otherwise, I see little choice but to split along the lines suggested by NtheP. Lamberhurst (talk) 18:28, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

I trimmed a load of non-notable incidents from the list a while ago, and a lot seem to have crept back in again. G-13114 (talk) 03:30, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Also, one way to do it would be have a separate article for level crossing accidents (List of level crossing accidents in the United Kingdom). Since they are not usually purely railway accidents, and it would remove a lot from this list. G-13114 (talk) 03:33, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Re splitting, as it is UK railways we are talking about, split could be pre 1923, 1923-47, 1948-92 and post 1992 (Pre grouping, Big Four, British Railways/Rail and post-Privatisation). 21:24, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

That would work, I think one of the big problems with this page is that it suffers badly from recentism with every incident being assiduously added. NtheP (talk) 21:37, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree with a lot of what's said above. There needs to be much stricter criteria for inclusion of incidents here before we start splitting it. This should absolutely not be a place to stick every minor incident where a couple of people got slightly hurt. I think as a rule, unless the accident is notable enough to have its own article than it shouldn't be included on this list. With that in mind I thin that the majority of the listings here could be deleted, especially the ones in recent history. Wikipedia is not a newspaper it isn't wikipedia's job to list every minor incident without any regard for notabillity. G-13114 (talk) 00:46, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Ok I've decided to be bold and given the article a fairly severe trim of minor incidents as there seems to be wide agreement that this should be done. And I think the article has been substantially improved because of it. G-13114 (talk) 01:19, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

In 2010 I opposed an attempt at defining criteria for inclusion in the list (you can see the discussion further up the page). Now I no longer support that view and agree that some sort of criteria are necessary. G-13114 I think your pruning has done a lot of good but for example I would have left the Liverpool James Street incident in the list because it resulted in a criminal prosecution and imprisonment of a member of railway staff for manslaughter - something that is fairly uncommon (thankfully) in British railway history. With the rise of wikidata, wikivoyage there does seem to be some sort of move recently against certain types of list articles e.g. wholesale deletion of list of bus routes in XXX articles and while this article is far above that standard perhaps it is best served as an adjunct to a main article about the History of rail safety in Great Britain rather than trying to be the lead article in itself. These are probably separate discussions but even with the pruning I would still suggest that a split along the lines of my original proposal or better the pre-group, grouping etc as this is the time split used in most article on rail transport in GB. NtheP (talk) 07:36, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree with NtheP, the Liverpool James Street accident is notable enough to be incuded, because of the subsequent prosecution and conviction of the guard. Mjroots (talk) 09:05, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Ok then, put it back in if you like. I was erring on the side of cutting it back quite severely, and I might have cut a few that might have enough merit to remain. G-13114 (talk) 19:13, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

I think it might be worth having another go at adopting notability criteria. G-13114's list above provide a decent basis on which to start. In the absence of some kind of guideline, this list (even if trimmed now) will soon fill up again with the numerous minor incidents reported on the railways each year. Lamberhurst (talk) 15:53, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

I've put back 4 recently deleted accidents: Liverpool James St. (as comments above), 1 level crossing accident where a person was killed and it was shown to be down to an error by the signaller, 2 RH&D accidents as it lead to the death of a rail worker in both cases (and is perhaps notable for happening twice in a relatively short time frame). I think notable and serious accidents with passenger trains on 'preserved' lines should be listed here - all UK passenger railways operate under the ORR.

Fatalities without damage or derailment included?

I notice that there are 2 fatality events listed in the post privatisation list - James Street and Elsenham.

I've no idea who thought these should be added, but they don't fit into the general idea of the list. My take on the list is that it is for significant accidents which caused damage and/or derailment and/or multiple fatalities.

Whilst obviously the two girls getting killed on a level crossing at Elsenham and the girl being killed at James Street are tragic and politically significant incidents which resulted in RAIB and legal investigations, for the purpose of this list they are not significant and should not be included, because if they were included, where would we stop with them? --Thalamus82 (talk) 08:55, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

We've tried to formalise it before, see e.g. #Criteria for inclusion above and WP:RAILCRASH. But in the end nothing was formally agreed, so we fall back on WP:GNG, which is vague at best. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:05, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I strongly believe that there should be some form of criteria, because it all seems rather arbitrary at the moment.

My proposal would be fairly simple and the criteria would be applied in this order:

• The incident has to take place on Network Rail Managed Infrastructure (so no private railways, LUL, etc).
• AND there has to be a derailment or damage to the infrastructure and/or rolling stock.
• AND if it involves a collision with a road vehicle on a level crossing, there must be at least one death (railway staff, passenger or public).
• AND if it involves a passenger train, there must be at least 1 injury, if it doesn't there has to be at least one death.

This would get rid of all the non-significant cruft which has built up in the list and provide a workable criteria for inclusion. It would remove pedestrian level crossing fatalities, insignificant events such as the slow speed derailment at Kings Cross in 2003 and the 67 that ended up perched on top of the MGR in 2000 and stop the inclusion of insignificant level crossing collisions.

We should also consider renaming the page - because it's slightly misleading. The London Underground stuff should probably be split off too. --Thalamus82 (talk) 09:06, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Article ballooning - time to reduce or split?

From 22nd December to 26th January this article has ballooned from 94,126 bytes to 124,032 bytes, mostly from the login '86.27.84.55' in several sessions over Christmas and a few days ago. Whilst much of the increase seems to fall within the existing (loose) criteria there is much detail added which falls into trivia (model of car and lorry involved), detail that perhaps would be better in the accident's own wikipedia page, information like Fife is in Scotland or a link to the general wikipedia page of the city / region / country that accident happened to be in (i.e. not a railway related link).

Do we need a clear out of these extra details (which probably add up to many Kb)? The last time this article went over 100,000 bytes a reasonable request was to split it - or has the time come to do this?

I don't want to start the 'what accidents should be listed here' debate, which is a different point! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2ghoti (talk • contribs) 18:38, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

For me, if the accident has its own article (or a dedicated section in an article which primarily concerns a station or line), all that is needed here is a brief summary. For example, the entry for Winsford (1948) might state "improper use of communication cord; rear end collision". The list at the back of L.T.C. Rolt's Red for Danger comprises summaries that are mostly even shorter than that, and could well serve as an inspiration. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:20, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Agree with both. There's a lot of stripping around locations could be done - it's very thorough and commendable but we don't need to know from this page that Abermule, for example, was in Montgomeryshire in 1921 but is now in Powys. I'd also suggest removing the chart from the top of the table as well as being OR, its source being the table below it. Nthep (talk) 09:35, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

I would also agree. The chart would have been more useful if it covered a longer timespan. I would suggest removing the column headed "type" and limiting each entry to no more than one line of text, in particular removing duplication and the use of "see main article" templates. I would also put the Charing Cross roof accident into the table. Lamberhurst (talk) 10:44, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

As a side point, my personal opinion is that this page was in a better state before it was tabulated. See here from 2011. Lamberhurst (talk) 10:54, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Noticed that each entry has the date listed twice - possibly a hang-over from when it was made into a table. I notice some agreement here from regulars in the railway pages: Is it time to have a few changes to the content of each entry. E.G. No links to non railway pages, only 1st column for date, no 'see main article' text, 'one line' for entries with details on another page, no trivia, location text limited to nearest conurbation? All with exceptions allowed _where absolutely necessary_. Would this need to be agreed before going further? 2ghoti (talk) 20:34, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Updated 'The Big Four' as above, seems to work. Anyone want to assist with the rest of the article?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2ghoti (talk • contribs) 22:30, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

I thought Powys was disbanded years ago. -mattbuck (Talk) 11:49, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

It may well have done, I lost track of Welsh local authorities some tine ago. Nthep (talk) 12:08, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

No, it's still one of the Principal areas of Wales. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:21, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

In scope?

Is this within the scope of this article? Nthep (talk) 11:27, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

You ought to have described it. It was the Longleat ride derailing whereby a person suffered multiple fractures. Clearly unprecedented in inclusion here and not really 'UK rail' related. Similar accidents I read at many such differently maintained attractions with individual safety attitudes. To do your homework on those they would need a separate list and I am not sure wikipedia would host it as it or others should cover ALL rides globally.- Adam37 Talk 10:16, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

what is the purpose of the column named type?

This is a question which has been asked a couple of times on this talk page, but not answered. Neither has there been any definitive answer to criteria for including entries. Could the type column be used to note significant accidents? Maybe then all the accidents reported at http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/ could be included? For example, I see that only one of the ten accidents at Slough appear in this list, though the other nine involved 1 fatality and 71 injuries. Alternatively, could the type column be used to indicate the main cause, eg SPAD, track defect, civil engineering defect, weather, vandalism, train defect, etc?Johnragla (talk) 23:01, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

I would have a preference for deletion of this column, but if you can make some use of it which would not involve summarising or repeating information in the last column, please go ahead. I would however have some reservations about attaching "significant" and "minor" labels to accidents, as this could well go against WP:NPOV. Lamberhurst (talk) 14:07, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

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Birmingham - Wolverhampton. Before 23rd Feb. 1838

Copied from an Australian Newspaper :- http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/8748803/669440#

DREADFUL ACCIDENT on THE BIRMINGHAM and LIVERPOOL RAILWAY.— On Tuesday night, the trains from Liverpool to Birmingham, which usually arrive in Birmingham at half-past 10 and 11 o'clock, were delayed until 4 o'clock the following morning, in consequence of a concurrence of accidents, one of an appalling nature, which befell them on their way thither between Liverpool and Birmingham. It appears, that the mixed train, conveying a great number of passengers and horses, whilst proceeding down the inclined plane, of which the whole line from Wolverhampton to Birmingham may he said to consist, came in contact with a horse, which had accidentally strayed upon the railway from the adjoining fields.

The affrighted animal fell unluckily across the rails and the engine, tender, and many of the carriages, passed over his body, and such was the violence of the shock occasioned by its resistance to the moving vehicles, that the engine shot off the lines with prodigious force, dragging with it, down to the embankment of five or six feet high, the ponderous vehicle, the tender, and several of the carriages, smashing some into splinters, prostrating others, and displacing all more or less. The tender fell upon the body of one of the conductors of the engine, who was instantly crushed to death, the other (his brother) retained his hold upon the machine, and escaped without injury. The three first carriages contained horses, which, of course, were dreadfully mangled and bruised. The next and first carriage in the train containing passengers was upset and thrown upon its side upon the railway, but, marvellous to relate, neither the passengers inside, nor the guard upon the top, who was hurled headlong into the ditch below, sustained any injury ; the numerous passengers in the other vehicle retained their seats, and, beyond the shock and alarm, and delay, sustained no inconvenience.

A few minutes after the accident, the last train from Liverpool came up, but were warned by signals in time to prevent their running down their unfortunate precursors, which now lay in the way. In order to get into the other line of railway it had to retrace the ground to Wolverhampton, and there, whilst in the act of passing from one line to the other, owing to some derangement of the moveable points of intersection of the rails, the engine and tender ran off the rails with a violence which separated them from the train, which, with its numerous cargo of passengers, was thus left without any means of reaching its destination at midnight, 14 miles from Birmingham. In this situation, the thermometer being down almost to zero, some remained quietly ensconced and half congealed in the carriages, waiting for relief, whilst others, with more zeal and wisdom, applied their shoulders to the wheel, and by the time the moon was waning, and "coming dawn" about to appear, they had succeeded in righting the ponderous mass " Saturn," or " Jupiter," I believe, which had so madly shot from its sphere. The relator, a friend of ours, who was on his way home by the last train, describes the wreck of the carriages which they had now reached, as being singular and appalling in the extreme. The engine had taken a flying leap from off the embankment, and was standing bolt upright in the field below ; to it clung the overturned tender, the blood of its victim still warm and reeking beneath its wheels, like a car of Juggernaut. Here were demolished carriages, there a noble horse breathing his last gasp, and on his back, struggling to release himself from the cords by which he was bound to the car. Here were masses of half ignited coke strewed about like volcanic cinders, there pools of water, streaming and bubbling like "geysers," and the disembowelled engine yet faintly breathing, as if in its last agonies— the innocent origin and unfortunate victim of all the mischief still lying headless and mangled on the situation where he fell. On every side were ruin and desolation— fragments of machinery, broken walls, blood and dust, whilst, to complete the picture, the locality came in to aid— the strange, unearthly light of the iron furnaces around, on all sides, mingling with the quiet moon-light, throwing over the whole an effect which a Turner might conceive, but which it would be impossible for language to describe

It is a source of congratulation that only one human life was lost, but it is a painful drawback to the advantages we derive, and the pleasure we anticipate from the general introduction of this splendid mode of travelling, that the greatest circumspection and care cannot entirely prevent the occurrence of accidents such as those we have described.— Leicestershire Mercury. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.150.140.37 (talk) 15:58, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/eventsummary.php?eventID=7496

78.150.140.37 (talk) 17:01, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Accident causing closure of Carlisle freight line 1 May 1984

This incident appears to be little documented, but failure to connect a brake pipe on a freight train resulted in a divided train, the rear half of which ran away and demolished key infrastructure on the freight line through Carlisle at 60mph (a 20mph line) including a river bridge. Had the rear half followed the front (as it would have to today) there would be major destruction of Carlisle Citadel station. Quite notable for what did not happen and was avoided as much as the damage caused which while extensive did not result in loss of life. Very few references, but here is a photo to verify what happened:- https://www.flickr.com/photos/16224165@N04/5544395876 and another reference here:- http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/eventsummary.php?eventID=6622 31.51.220.144 (talk) 14:07, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

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Pre-1830 accidents and fatalities

This list is perpetuating the myth that William Huskisson was the first person to be killed by a train, by excluding the pre 1830 entries. This list should be merged with or borrow from [List of rail accidents (before 1880)] to avoid confusion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by LMRT (talk • contribs) 21:16, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

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19/11/1958

The number of deaths is said to be none and five. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.1.37.70 (talk) 15:20, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Removal listed as a hoax

SK2242, Regarding this edit on the List of rail accidents, why have you deleted it and labelled it as a hoax? Maybe a slight rewording and the addition of a cite, maybe it is not worthy of inclusion as no-one was injured, but a hoax? It wasn't on 1 April. The joy of all things (talk) 10:41, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

References

It wasn't sourced, for a start - it looks WP:EXCEPTIONAL. It also wasn't written very well - damaging the HST and IET very badly, train near Neville Hill, East Leeds.The HST was struck of service Then there is the last phrase - and taken to a local scrap yard whilst the Class 800 was taken to a depot to be fixed which reads like these events occurred straight away, rather like your car had dinged a wall busting a headlamp, and so you'd taken it to Joe's Motors to be repaired. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:49, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

....and SK2242 put it back, not that I was arguing for its inclusion, just wondered why he said it was a hoax? I have included enough cites to show reliability and I did say maybe it is not worthy of inclusion as no-one was injured. The joy of all things (talk) 15:48, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Yeah sorry about that, I was busy so I only had time to revert my edit. SK2242 (talk) 18:15, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Inclusion of minor mishaps of no consequence and no secondary sourcing

I tried to work out from the top of this talk-page what are the criteria for inclusion, but failed. My motivation was removal of a level-crossing accident at Appleford, sourced only to the Accident Archive. It was a very minor accident in which one person was injured. The accident archive site contains scanned copies of accident reports of just about every reportable incident on the UK railway system since 1840, amounting to well over 9000 incidents. Presumably there is no intention to record every one of them here, as our WP list is described as being of "significant" accidents. The accident reports in the accident archive site, while very reliable, are very much primary data. I would assume this list should be of accidents sufficiently notable to have made it into books or non-trivial newspaper articles (a good definition of "significant"). Anything that cannot be sourced except to a report by the rail investigators is probably not notable enough for the list. Elemimele (talk) 13:17, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

I agree, if you read the archive discussions above, this has been discussed several times before but there was never an agreement. Maybe it's worth being WP:BOLD and trimming the list down to something more sensible. G-13114 (talk) 14:31, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Agreed, I've trimmed a few more off the end of the post-privatisation list. I've done them individually or in small batches in case people need to revert. It can be tricky to assess notability. For example, Whitacre junction is sourced to a newspaper but I don't think it's notable. Any rail accident nowadays will generate an article in the local news (if it's in London, it'll be in the national news) with reports of "major disruption", but if it's just a minor mishap that closed the line for the rest of the day, with no one injured, just a lot of angry commuters, I am not sure it's notable. On the other hand, Ely West junction is sourced only to the accident report, but it closed all navigation on the river Ouse for three months and had extended coverage at least in the local newspapers, so its lack of sourcing here is plain laziness on the part of whoever added it. Elemimele (talk) 13:30, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi, I've readded the Kirkby train crash and 2021 Salisbury rail crash which you removed because they have over 10 injuries and their own articles. Hope that's okay! greyzxq ^talk 13:43, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes entirely, I should have checked those two. I should also have moved a better citation into this list, but I'm not sure which of the sources to use from their own articles. Elemimele (talk) 14:56, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Just looked at the Kirkby train crash article and it says that one one person was injured, so feel free to remove that. I’ll probably check every entry now to make sure the numbers of injured and dead are actually correct. About the sources to use, just use any as long as they support the info you’re citing, remember you can use more than one source if needed! greyzxq ^talk 15:03, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Cases such as Kirkby train crash which pass notability guidelines really ought to be listed for navigational purposes if nothing else. Garuda3 (talk) 15:38, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I agree, and I was mistaken to remove Kirkby. There are some accidents with stand-alone articles that seem to me to be shaky, for example Spa Road Junction, which I've nominated for deletion. But I'm not a deletionist by nature. My belief is that many rail accidents have been truly notable, through their consequences for society at large, or because they shaped future politics and development of the rail industry. If we distill these out and present them to our readers, they learn something. If we hide them amongst a huge morass of minor buffer-bumps, we make it very hard for our readers to see the bigger picture: i.e. we're hiding trees in a forest. But I completely welcome those editors who correct me when I take a chainsaw to the wrong tree. Elemimele (talk) 22:02, 14 January 2023 (UTC)