Qualla: 1890 Norton Fitzwarren Rail Crash

1890 Norton Fitzwarren Rail Crash: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

At 1:24 in the morning of 11 November 1890, a Great Western boat train carrying passengers from Plymouth toward London Paddington tore past a clear signal at Norton Fitzwarren and slammed at full steam into the back of a goods train waiting on the same line. The signalman had forgotten the goods train was there. He had cleared the signals, opened the section, and waved the express into a darkness that ended ten lives. The driver and fireman of the goods train jumped clear at the last instant. The boat train's guard, asked later about braking, could remember none.

1890 Norton Fitzwarren Rail Crash: A Junction in the Quiet Hours

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Norton Fitzwarren station sat about two miles south-west of Taunton, the point where the Great Western mainline narrowed and country branches peeled off toward Watchet and Minehead. By the small hours of a November night it was nearly silent: a single signalman in his box, lamps ...

1890 Norton Fitzwarren Rail Crash: The Forgetting

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The fast goods passed safely. The signalman moved the pilot engine back to the down main. While he was still concentrating on that, the next signal box up the line offered him the up boat train at 1:23. It was the Plymouth-to-Paddington service, a special running to connect with ...

1890 Norton Fitzwarren Rail Crash: Ten Names

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Ten passengers were killed in the collision. Eleven others, including the boat train's driver and fireman, were seriously injured. The engine, a Bristol and Exeter Railway 4-4-0ST numbered 2051, was so badly damaged it never returned to traffic and was withdrawn. The dead would h...

1890 Norton Fitzwarren Rail Crash: What the Inquiry Found

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Colonel Rich of the Board of Trade conducted the inquiry. The immediate cause, he wrote, was the signalman's lapse - a man holding too many movements in his head at once on a quiet shift, allowing an express into a section he had just blocked himself. Rich also identified contrib...

1890 Norton Fitzwarren Rail Crash: Fifty Years Later, Same Junction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Norton Fitzwarren station closed to passengers in 1961. The trackwork has changed, the signal boxes are long gone, and the new West Somerset Railway platform that opened in 2009 sits on a slightly different alignment to the original. But the place itself has another, darker reson...