T ragedy strikes

The boat train left Folkestone Harbour shortly after 2.30pm on that fateful afternoon in June 1865, conveying passengers on the final leg of their voyage from Paris to London.

On board the South Eastern Railway express were 110 passengers, with many from “the higher circles of life” seated in the seven first-class carriages including perhaps the greatest writer of the age, Charles Dickens.

After travelling through Headcorn at 50mph, a red flag alerted the driver to stop. Ahead was the Beult viaduct, where a length of track had been removed while engineering works took place. Foreman Henry Benge and his team had been working on the 70-yard bridge for 10 weeks, and they believed they had more than enough time to get the job done before the boat train arrived.

But Mr Benge, 33, and barely literate, misread the timetable. He thought the ‘tidal train’ was due at 5pm, about 90 minutes after the crash. But that was Saturday’s timetable and the accident happened on Friday, June 9, 1865. Signalman John Whiles stood, with his red flag, less than 600 yards from the bridge to warn the engine driver. Company policy was 1,000 metres.

It was too late. The train went rushing onwards, where eight carriages plunged 15ft into the muddy river and two more were left hanging from the side of the bridge.

Ten passengers were killed and more than 50 injured in the Staplehurst disaster. Dickens - who was travelling with his mistress, the actress Ellen Ternan - was lucky, he walked away from the crash and after helping to free other passengers spent three hours comforting the injured and dying. Dickens’ son Henry would later say his father “may be said never to have altogether recovered” from the incident. He died five years to the day to the disaster after suffering a stroke, aged 58, at his Gads Hill Place home in Higham.

Mr Benge, married with three children and living in Headcorn, was charged with manslaughter.

A judge sentenced him to nine months hard labour.

But at other times in the county’s history it has been nature which intervened to disrupt the railways.

In December 1915 a severe landslide at the Warren in Folkestone caused the railway line to Dover to shift 50 metres towards the sea as a section of chalk cliffs collapsed after weeks of heavy rain.

The line remained shut until August 1919 as the First World War delayed its reopening. The kink in the line remains visible today.

Derek Butcher, from Network Rail, discovered dramatic photographs of the aftermath, of what became known as the Great Fall, in a filing cabinet while moving offices.

He said: “We believe the train pictured was alerted to the landslip by the signal box at Folkestone Junction and was slowed down. It found itself part on and part off the landslip. “They were able to evacuate passengers who walked through the tunnel to Folkestone Junction station. There was a significant amount of movement following the train stopping. That’s why it looks so horrific.” The building of the railway between Dover and Folkestone was quite a feat of engineering. Opened in 1844, its tracks run close to the Channel and travels through tunnels excavated from the chalk cliffs. Landslips have always posed a danger, and in 1877 two people were killed when part of a Martello Tunnel was destroyed. The line remained closed for three months afterwards.

The last major movement was recorded in 1939, but Network Rail works constantly to ensure the situation is monitored. Derek said: “The landslip is still active. We monitor the location extensively with settlement points on a monthly basis and use light-detecting and ranging technology, a laser scanning technique to record points on the landscape. The data helps us keep track of which locations are moving.

“Other techniques include boring holes in the ground to drain water, and building walls and other structures designed to stop the landslip from moving.” The line between Folkestone and Dover was out of action as recently as 2016, after cracks in the sea wall appeared.

A new viaduct needed to be built before trains could run again, replacing the one built in the 1800s.

Nature also played its part in one of the most deadly accidents involving a Kent-bound train when, in December 1957, two commuter trains crashed in dense fog near Lewisham in

Submitted by Donald Corke The scene of the Lewisham train crash in which 90 people were killed

Picture: Matthew Walker Donald Corke became a hero in the crash