Crash recovery: so much has changed in the past 50 years

The article about events at Thirsk 50 years ago ( RAIL 831) reminded me of a view I took just three weeks after the derailment.

Colour slide film, combined with an attempt to take a photograph from a moving train through the sliding ventilation window, meant that the image was not as sharp as I would have wished, but it shows just how much operating procedures have changed in the past 50 years.

On August 20, three weeks after the tragic collision, I travelled with a group of friends from Doncaster to Edinburgh on an A4 Locomotive Society railtour. Just south of the site of the Thirsk derailment we stopped and set back onto the Up Main, then crept slowly past the recovery scene immediately adjacent to the breakdown gang.

In today’s world, where train-crash sites are declared as ‘crime scenes’ and then completely restored before being reopened to normal running, such a sequence of events is now unimaginable.

As we passed the site of the derailment we saw the York steam-powered breakdown crane at work, along with one from either Leeds or Gateshead. The men all took the chance to take a short break to admire the passing of our locomotive 4498 Sir Nigel

Gresley, and watch the passengers watching them!

Just behind them a Cemflo wagon can be seen hanging in mid-lift.

The casual working clothes are a piece of social history in their own right, compared with our modern age of hi-vis vests and overalls.

Paul Roberts, Leicester