Service 2K48 had left its previous station on time, at 18:49:45. The train was a six-car formation of two Class 507 electric multiple units coupled together - the same units that had run on Merseyrail since the late 1970s, on the line that splits at Kirkby station. From here the Merseyrail third-rail electric network reaches back toward Liverpool; the other track, run separately, leads out toward Wigan. At the end of each line stood a buffer stop, with a passenger walkway between them. The driver accelerated to maximum permissible speed and then began to coast. As the permissible speed rose toward the station, he should have accelerated again. He did not. He had a message to answer.

The Rail Accident Investigation Branch reconstructed what happened in the seconds that followed. The train passed the start of the station's speed restriction while still coasting. Hollis, 59 years old, eventually noticed, but too late - the emergency brakes did not have enough distance to stop the train before it reached the buffers. The collision tore through the buffer stop and damaged the station structure, causing £450,000 worth of damage. The only person physically injured was Hollis himself, who was taken to hospital as a precaution. The twelve passengers on board, and the second crew member, were checked on the scene by paramedics. Merseyside Fire and Rescue handed the site over to the British Transport Police by 21:40 that night. The station reopened on 21 March.

The driver of any Merseyrail service carries the lives of everyone on board, and the public assumption - the entire trust on which commuter rail rests - is that the cab is a focused, undivided space. The RAIB's investigation found that on 13 March 2021 it was not. Hollis had been distracted by his phone in the moments before the impact. He had received the 'RIP Murray' message; he had replied. The investigation made recommendations including the development of systems to monitor driver alertness and a wider assessment of buffer-stop collision risk on the Merseyrail network. There was no failure of the train, no failure of the signalling. There was a man, a phone, and a message about someone he had admired.

Merseyrail dismissed Hollis in September 2021. In January 2022 he was charged with endangering the safety of people on the railway. He pleaded guilty at Liverpool Magistrates Court on 8 February that year, and on 8 March was sentenced at Liverpool Crown Court to 12 months in prison, suspended for two years, along with 180 hours of community service and a three-month electronic curfew. The case joined a small, sober international literature - the 2008 Chatsworth collision in California, where a Metrolink driver had been texting and 25 people died; the 2016 Bad Aibling crash in Germany, where a dispatcher distracted by a mobile game caused the deaths of 12. Kirkby's casualty count is, mercifully, just one bruised driver and the station behind him. The lesson is identical.

Kirkby station sits at approximately 53.487 degrees north, 2.902 degrees west, in the Metropolitan Borough of Knowsley about six miles northeast of Liverpool city centre. The site is in a dense suburban setting with the M57 motorway running just to the east. Liverpool John Lennon Airport (EGGP) is approximately 10 nautical miles south-southwest. The station was originally opened on 20 November 1848 as part of the Liverpool and Bury Railway. The line through Kirkby is best identified from the air by the parallel tracks of the Merseyrail Northern Line and the freight branch that once continued to Wigan; both can be picked out from 2,000 feet AGL upward.