Signalman Bloor was busy. Seven trains were within his patch of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway on the evening of 28 September 1934, and his hands were on the levers in the Winwick Junction signal box while the telephone rang for an eighth time. The call was about a rearrangement of running orders, a perishable-goods express full of fish that needed to overtake the slower traffic. Outside, in the dark, a local passenger train from Warrington to Wigan stood at his home signals, waiting. The fireman of that train had climbed down and started walking the 172 yards to the signal box to remind Bloor of his presence, as Rule 55 required. Before the fireman could arrive, Bloor cleared his signals for the express to come through. He had forgotten the local was there. Eleven people died.
Signal boxes on busy junctions did not run on one person's memory. They ran on two, and on paper. Bloor had a booking lad with him in the cabin that night, a young man named E. Derbyshire whose job was to maintain the train register, ticking off each movement so that the signalman did not have to hold seven trains in his head simultaneously. Derbyshire was supposed to remind Bloor of the local train waiting at the home signals. Instead, when Bloor cried out that he had not yet given the Train Out of Section bell for the local, Derbyshire assumed he himself had missed seeing the train pass. Rather than say so and force a check, he guessed. He filled in the register as if the local had moved on. Two distracted men, one register, and a wrong assumption between them, was enough to clear the path for the disaster that followed.
Driver Hope, in the cab of the stationary local, saw his home signals clear. He notched the regulator forward to crawl back into motion, intending to pick up his fireman at the signal box. He had no way of knowing that the Euston-to-Blackpool express, drawn by LNWR Prince of Wales Class engine number 25648, was thundering north on the same line at express speed. The express struck the rear of the local. The rearmost coach of the local was demolished. The first two coaches of the express telescoped together. The guard and five passengers from the local train died. Three more passengers in the express died. Two further passengers, later, in hospital. Nineteen others were hurt. Bloor admitted his responsibility freely. He had not been malicious; he had been overwhelmed.
Colonel A. C. Trench, the Ministry of Transport's Inspecting Officer, delivered a report that focused on system rather than blame. Booking lads, he wrote, must be drilled to know that any register entry not made from direct observation must be verified with the signalman. Signal posts at busy junctions must have telephones so that drivers and firemen could contact the box without leaving their trains. Most importantly, track circuits, the electrical detection systems that automatically tell a signalman whether a section is occupied, must be installed at junctions like Winwick. Track circuits had been around for decades, but their installation was not yet universal on British railways. Each new disaster pushed the technology a little further into common use. After Winwick, track circuits on busy junctions became harder to argue against. Bloor would not have been able to clear his signals for the express if a track circuit had been telling him the local was still standing on his line.
Winwick Junction had one more lesson to teach. In July 1967 a passenger diesel multiple unit ran past a semaphore signal at danger and collided with a goods train. There were no fatalities this time. The investigation found that the semaphore arm had jammed at about seventeen degrees off the horizontal, not quite in the on position but not properly off either. The signalman had failed to confirm visually that his lever movement had achieved the right result. Routine maintenance had been inadequate. The inquiry recommended better inspection of signal hardware, a principle that has been re-learned at intervals across the network ever since. A more serious version of the same accident happened at Invergowrie in Scotland in 1979. Winwick today is quieter, the LMS having become British Railways, then Network Rail. The junction is still busy with West Coast Main Line traffic. The lessons are written into rule books, but the memory of the eleven who died in 1934 is also written into the procedures that keep modern trains apart.
Winwick Junction lies at 53.43N, 2.62W, about two miles north of Warrington town centre on the West Coast Main Line. From the air, the junction is recognisable where the WCML splits into the Warrington-Preston main line and the Warrington-Earlestown branch line. The village of Winwick sits just to the west of the line; the M62 motorway crosses east-west about a mile to the south. The original Winwick Junction signal box no longer stands. Recommended viewing altitude 2,500-4,000 ft to see the junction layout and the parallel motorway. Nearest airports: Manchester (EGCC) 16 nm east, Liverpool John Lennon (EGGP) 16 nm west, Hawarden (EGNR) 20 nm southwest.