Accident aftermath

“Some time ago, The Courier featured an article on the train crash at Wormit in 1955, which certainly brought back memories to me,” writes Michael Duncan of Perth. “The incident is still sharp in my mind.

“Resident in Newport, I was a teenager at the time and playing in the closing stages of a tennis tournament at the courts situated below the station. As I threw the ball up to serve, the noise of the crash came and my focus went from the tennis ball to the railway sleepers being jettisoned into the air like so many matchsticks as the train ploughed into the platform.

“Bryan Forbes, the porter, who had been selling tickets in the ticket office, fell backwards off his stool as he saw the train hurtling towards him. He was shaken but unhurt.

“With others from the tennis courts we rushed up to the station. People were already scrambling from the wreckage and helping badly injured children to safe resting positions in the open air. Others were doing what they could to rescue those still in the tunnel.

“I ran down a couple of hundred yards to the doctor’s house for help. My explanation of the accident can not have conveyed the urgency I was feeling. Glancing at his watch, the doctor explained that it was his day off but he would come until someone might arrive to relieve him.

“Obviously the accident had put an end to the tennis tournament. Grant Balfour, one of the competitors who had been photographing the players throughout the afternoon, had saved one last shot for a group photograph. This never happened and it was he who finished his film to photograph the carnage at Wormit Station. This dramatic but sad photograph was the one used in The Courier the following Monday.”

Picture: University of Dundee Archive Services. A train headed by the diesel locomotive No 47 550 University of Dundee. Read more about it at the top of the left-hand column.

“I wonder if anyone can help with the names of the people in this photograph,” says William Barker, who sent it in.