On This Day: Clapham Junction rail crash kills 35 people
This article is part of Yahoo's 'On This Day' series
At 8.13am on 12 December 1988, three trains collided in south London in one of the UK’s worst rail disasters.
The crash, just south of Clapham Junction station, killed 35 people and left almost 500 injured.
The tragedy, on this day 33 years ago, was the result of a signal failure caused by a wiring fault.
While new wiring had been installed, the old wiring was left in place and not properly secured.
It meant a British Rail passenger train crashed into the back of another train that had stopped at a signal, before a third train - carrying no passengers - collided with the wreckage while heading in the other direction on the adjacent line.
A subsequent inquiry into the crash revealed the work of the signalling technician responsible was not inspected by an independent person, nor was he told his working practices were wrong.
The inquiry also heard that the technician had carried out the wiring work during his 13th consecutive seven-day working week.
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British Rail was later fined £250,000 for health and safety violations in connection with the crash.
The 07.18 train from Basingstoke to London Waterloo, a crowded 12-car train, had stopped before Clapham Junction when the driver was given a red signal.
He reported from a telephone at the side of the line that he had stopped but was told there was nothing wrong with the signal.
At 8.13am, the 06.30 from Poole in Dorset collided with the rear of the Basingstoke train. An incorrect signal had been displayed to the driver of the second train, which had gone into a blind bend and had no chance to stop.
A third train with no passengers coming from the other direction then collided with the Poole train.
The driver of a fourth train approaching the crash managed to come to a stop behind the first two trains. At that point, the signal was showing a yellow “proceed with caution” rather than a red “danger” warning.
Thirty-five people died as a result of the crash, while a total of 484 people were injured, 69 of them seriously.
The first people on the scene to help were pupils and teachers from the nearby Emanuel School, who were later commended by prime minister Margaret Thatcher for their actions.
Read more: Fatal crashes an almost annual occurrence on Britain’s railways in ’80s and ’90s
The emergency services were hampered in the rescue operation because the railway line was in a cutting, with a fence at the top and a wall at the bottom of a wooded slope. The last injured person removed from the wreckage was taken to hospital at 1.04pm and the final body was removed at 3.45pm.
The rewiring work that caused the crash had been done a few weeks previously, but the fault developed the day before when equipment was moved and a loose wire had created a false feed to a relay.
The wire had not been cut back or insulated, and the technician’s work had not been supervised, an independent inquiry chaired by Anthony Hidden, QC for the Department of Transport, had found.
Following the inquiry and its 250-page report, testing was mandated on the signalling network and employees’ hours were limited when involved in safety work.
A memorial to the 35 people who lost their lives was erected in Spencer Park in Battersea, above the railway where the crash took place.
The crash had the fourth highest death toll of any UK rail disaster since 1948.
Eleven years later, on 5 October 1999, 31 people were killed and 417 were injured in the Paddington rail crash at Ladbroke Grove, west London, when two passenger trains collided.
Watch: Victims of the Paddington rail crash remembered
