Lockerbie Air Crash - Impact on the railway?

[MarkWi72]

Apologies if this comes across as a bit morbid. I was listening to a Podcast about this on Friday. It came on randomly, when I was listening in the car.

I recall the evening vividly as I saw the newsflash. And I always wondered if the WCML was affected. At the time, I imagined it would be and a few years ago when travelling from Glasgow, I noted the town when we passed through.

Can anyone shed any light on this?

 

[snowball]

I don't remember hearing of the railway being affected. The main crash site was Sherwood Crescent which is a few hundred metres west of the WCML. About a dozen houses were destroyed or severely damaged and later rebuilt. The A74(M) did not then exist. The A74 was then a dual carriageway with two lanes each way; the present B7076 is on the line of the then southbound carriageway. The southbound carriageway became a big hole but I believe two-way traffic was soon possible on the northbound.

 

[MarkWi72]

Interesting.no I couldn’t find anything, about the railway so thought that it could not have been too affected. I wondered if debris had fallen in it so that would have required collection by investigating teams.

 

[Taunton]

I've followed accounts of this, since leaving Heathrow airport for the USA a few hours before, and it having caused a significant family upset for a short while until I got there, as you can imagine. It was extensively reported in US newspapers over the following days, and there were accounts of the WCML being closed, and lighter debris being caught in the OHLE. The minor debris covered a very wide area, some being well towards the East Coast. Part of the reason the aircraft was, unusually, so far north was it was routing to avoid a very strong jetstream flow at high levels from the Atlantic.

 

[MadMac]

One thing that did happen was that the Carstairs S&T fault team was dispatched to open up the Relay Room at the station. The crash took out the town’s phone exchange, but BR’s internal phone system was unaffected so they effectively had the only working phones in the area. They were given instructions on where to exit the A74 to meet a police escort.

 

[The Puddock]

Interesting.no I couldn’t find anything, about the railway so thought that it could not have been too affected. I wondered if debris had fallen in it so that would have required collection by investigating teams.

Presumably the railway was searched as part of the initial response. I was told years ago by someone who was heavily involved that there was ballast cleaning to the south of the station in the early 1990s - around 92 or 93 - which did turn up quite a lot of small debris and personal effects. It was all carefully collected and sent off to [?somewhere?]. The ballast cleaning wasn’t specifically in reaction to the disaster, just part of normal track maintenance of the time, but all involved were well aware of the potential of finding stuff.

I’ve also heard from a few different folk that there was damage to the overhead lines but can’t vouch for the accuracy of that.

 

[Statto]

Here's some pictures from the Daily Mirror site (yes i know it's Reach PLC which are awful sites) which show the extent of the damage, but i'm not sure how it affected the rail services.

How Scottish street has changed 30 years after Lockerbie bombing

Sherwood Crescent was once the site of the worst terrorist atrocity ever seen in Britain, the Lockerbie bombing

www.mirror.co.uk

 

[Cowley]

Unfortunately any searches on it keep bringing up the recent attempted theft on a mail train, but I had it my mind that there was a passing AC electric hauled mail service that was slightly damaged by debris? I might have misremembered that though.

 

[D6130]

Although I was living and working on the Isle of Wight at the time, I was told by a Scottish ex-colleague that the on-call Area Operations Supervisor was despatched to the scene and all that was found on the railway were a conjoined pair of aircraft seats and a briefcase. No overhead line damage was mentioned.

 

[MarkWi72]

I did see a witness account of someone who picked up his daughter from Lockerbie station, that evening (can't recall where - it was a while back) and , he said as the train left the station and was almost out of earshot, the crash occurred.

 

[Mag_seven]

I may be misremembering but I'm sure a normal service was in operation the day after.

 

[randyrippley]

previous thread on the same subject
is it worth merging?

Was the Railway affected by the bombing of Pan Am 103 in the Lockerbie area?

Reading a Wikipedia article article about this terrible senseless outrage and remember it at the time. In the wiki article it states: The fireball rose above the houses and moved toward the nearby Glasgow–Carlisle A74 dual carriageway, scorching cars in the southbound lanes I know the WCML runs...

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[37166]

I was in Scotland that day on my way from Mallaig back to Crewe, I remember seeing the news on screens at Glasgow Queen Street, as far as i can remember train was on time at Crewe.

Wednesday 21 December 1988 37424 1555 Mallaig-Glasgow Queen Street-Stiring-Mossend Yard for 85007 to Crewe on 1M16 1935 Inverness-London Euston

 

[Cowley]

previous thread on the same subject
is it worth merging?

Was the Railway affected by the bombing of Pan Am 103 in the Lockerbie area?

Reading a Wikipedia article article about this terrible senseless outrage and remember it at the time. In the wiki article it states: The fireball rose above the houses and moved toward the nearby Glasgow–Carlisle A74 dual carriageway, scorching cars in the southbound lanes I know the WCML runs...

www.railforums.co.uk

Ah of course, it must have been this post that I was remembering.

 

[Cheshire Scot]

I passed through a few days after - possibly 24th December it happened on 21st - and recall seeing various debris in the field to the west side of the line.

 

[Falcon1200]

The tragedy at Lockerbie occurred during my two-year hiatus from Glasgow Control due to re-organisation, however given the nature of the incident, and the inevitable initial uncertainty surrounding it, I would expect that the line was blocked until the Police declared it acceptable to re-open and it had been examined, for any damage or debris.

 

[26021]

I was chasing 26039 which was on Carstairs portions that day and had gone south to Carlisle as a fill in move. I returned from Carlisle on 85020 on the 1S64 08:24 Plymouth - Edinburgh / Glasgow for 26039 forward from Carstairs on the Edinburgh portion at 17:08, so would have been through Lockerbie at around 16:30.
Normally I was to be found on 1S87 13:15 Brighton - Edinburgh as that was the best chance of class 26 action from Carstairs, but thankfully wasn't that day. Having spoken to people who were on 1S87 that day, which was due into Lockerbie at around 21:30 they said that an announcement was made saying that anyone wanting to alight at Lockerbie needed to go to the rear door of the train (pretty sure they said it was the rear door, but could be wrong, might have been the guards van). They were met by the police who made a decision on whether you were allowed off or not.

 

[MarkWi72]

Thankyou for this - I have to say, I had not heard of disruption at the time,( although living in the West Midlands, that might well have been unlikely). However, there was little on the news about the WCML. Is Sherwood Crescent Close to WCML? I know the M74 passes over it, I believe.

 

[The Puddock]

Thankyou for this - I have to say, I had not heard of disruption at the time,( although living in the West Midlands, that might well have been unlikely). However, there was little on the news about the WCML. Is Sherwood Crescent Close to WCML? I know the M74 passes over it, I believe.

The A74 was about 250 yards west of Sherwood Crescent - the current M74 passes close by but not over the Crescent. The railway is about 400 yards to the east. The postcode is DG11 2DY if you want to look at it on Google Maps. There is a memorial garden where the houses that were destroyed stood.

 

[snowball]

You can "drive" along Sherwood Crescent on Google Streetview. The rebuilt houses are a somewhat different style from the older houses so you can tell which is which.

 

[Jamesrob637]

Health and Safety was in lesser quantities 35 years ago (to the day next month, I was 3 so don't remember it). I would have thought that the railway was briefly closed, but reopened the following day.

 

[D6130]

I would have thought that the railway was briefly closed, but reopened the following day.

IIRC, that's more-or-less what happened. Amazingly there were no significant health & safety issues....purely by good luck.

 

[greyman42]

You can "drive" along Sherwood Crescent on Google Streetview. The rebuilt houses are a somewhat different style from the older houses so you can tell which is which.

There is a documentary on ITV on Wednesday 15 November about the disaster called "Return to Lockerbie".