Qualla: Knowle and Dorridge Rail Crash

Knowle and Dorridge Rail Crash: Introduction

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Ernie Morris had filmed his commute. A year before he died, he sat behind the windscreen of a Blue Pullman as a British Transport Films camera looked over his shoulder, and viewers of "Let's Go to Birmingham" watched the rails of the Chiltern Main Line unspool beneath his train at speed. On 15 August 1963, on a fine dry afternoon at ten past one, Morris was again driving the run from Snow Hill to Paddington when he saw the Knowle and Dorridge distant signal at caution. He had less than a thousand yards in which to stop a nine-coach express travelling at 80 miles an hour. It was not enough.

Knowle and Dorridge Rail Crash: A Signalman's Forgetting

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Birmingham Pullman was already running on a substitute. The luxury Blue Pullman multiple unit normally rostered to the 1 pm departure from Snow Hill had been withdrawn from service that day, and an 11-month-old diesel hydraulic Class 52 locomotive, D1040 Western Queen, had be...

Knowle and Dorridge Rail Crash: Nine Hundred Yards, Eighty Miles an Hour

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

He grabbed a red flag and ran. The freight train's driver saw it, braked hard, and stopped his train on the up main. All four men aboard the freight - driver, fireman, shunter, guard - leapt clear before the impact. But the distant signal that warned Morris of trouble ahead stood...

Knowle and Dorridge Rail Crash: The Three Men in the Cab

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Ernie Morris died at his controls. So did Sid Bench, the second driver - on the Pullman workings two drivers were required, and both men were in the front cab. The third man was David Corkery, the second man, who was on the train only because the rostered crewman had gone sick th...

Knowle and Dorridge Rail Crash: Quiet Track Through Suburban England

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Dorridge station today sits in commuter Solihull, the line still busy with Chiltern Railways services between Birmingham and London. The signal boxes are gone, replaced by centralised signalling that does not depend on a single man remembering what he authorised five minutes ago....