Qualla: Ufton Nervet rail crash

Ufton Nervet rail crash: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Motacilla, CC BY-SA 3.0. On the evening of 6 November 2004, an off-duty Thames Valley Police officer pulled up to a level crossing on a quiet Berkshire lane and saw something he could not understand. A man was carefully manoeuvring his Mazda 323 between the barriers on the tracks, then switched off his lights and his engine. The officer flashed his headlights, sounded his horn. The man did not respond. He was a 48-year-old chef from a country hotel called Wokefield Park, and he had spent that afternoon trying four times to telephone an HIV clinic that was closed for the weekend. The 17:35 First Great Western service from Paddington to Plymouth was approaching at 98 miles per hour.

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Image: Motacilla | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ufton Nervet rail crash: The Crossing

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MIDI, CC BY-SA 4.0. Ufton Nervet level crossing was an automatic half-barrier crossing - the type used in Britain on roads where traffic is light and the line speed does not exceed 100 mph. It sat on Ufton Lane, an unclassified road connecting the A4 between Reading and Newbury to the village of Uft...

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Image: MIDI | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ufton Nervet rail crash: Brian Drysdale

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Motacilla, CC BY-SA 3.0. Brian Drysdale was 48, a chef at Wokefield Park about seven miles from the crossing. He had reason to believe he had contracted HIV from a relationship in the late 1990s and may have feared he had developed AIDS. On 6 November 2004 he tried four times to reach the clinic that had...

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Image: Motacilla | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ufton Nervet rail crash: Catastrophe

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Motacilla, CC BY-SA 3.0. The car's engine block lodged under the train's leading axle, lifted the wheelset, and twisted the bogie. The flanges climbed the rail. The train ran upright for 91 metres before reaching a set of points at the start of a goods loop, and there it derailed catastrophically. All te...

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Image: Motacilla | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ufton Nervet rail crash: What the Inquest Found

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Motacilla, CC BY-SA 3.0. Between two and three hundred passengers were on board. Of them, 120 were injured, 71 hospitalised, 18 with serious injuries. Minor injuries were treated initially at the nearby Winning Hand pub. The scene drew 180 police officers, 84 fire crew, 50 ambulance crew, 36 doctors and ...

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Image: Motacilla | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ufton Nervet rail crash: The Long Argument About Glass

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Motacilla, CC BY-SA 3.0. David Main, whose partner and daughter had been killed, said at the inquest, "trains are not safe ... If laminated glass had been fitted they wouldn't have been ejected." The RSSB had already begun research. Its 2007 report concluded that laminated glass would provide "significan...

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Image: Motacilla | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ufton Nervet rail crash: More Deaths, Then a Bridge

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Motacilla, CC BY-SA 3.0. The crossing did not stop killing. Further fatalities occurred there in 2009, 2010, 2012, and 2014, and a near-miss in 2011 when a train passed the crossing at 61 mph with the barriers raised and the warning lights off - an attendant operating the crossing locally had not receive...

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Image: Motacilla | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ufton Nervet rail crash: Names That Stay

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MIDI, CC BY-SA 4.0. First Great Western renamed power car 43139 Driver Stan Martin 5 June 1950 - 6 November 2004. When 43139 was acquired by ScotRail in 2019, the name was transferred to GWR's 43198, alongside that of Driver Brian Cooper, who had died in the 1999 Ladbroke Grove rail crash. The Ufton...

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Image: MIDI | CC BY-SA 4.0