Battersea Park rail crash (1937)
| Date | 2 April 1937 |
|---|---|
| Time | 08:02 |
| Location | Battersea Park railway station |
| Country | England |
| Rail line | South London Line |
| Operator | Southern Railway |
| Cause | Signaller's error |
| Statistics | |
| Trains | 2 |
| Passengers | 350–400 |
| Deaths | 10 |
| Injuries | 80 (7 serious) |
| List of UK rail accidents by year | |
The Battersea Park rail crash occurred on 2 April 1937, just south of Battersea Park railway station on the Southern Railway, in London. Two electrically driven passenger trains collided on the Up Local line; the second train, from Coulsdon North to Victoria, had been allowed into the section while it was still occupied by the first train, from London Bridge to Victoria. The signalman at Battersea Park, G. F. Childs, believing there was a fault with the Sykes electromechanical interlocking apparatus which was installed at the box, had opened up the case of the instrument and inadvertently cleared the interlock which should have prevented this situation. The official enquiry ruled that he subsequently accepted the Coulsdon train, although he should have been aware that the London Bridge train had not cleared the section. Ten people were killed, including the guard of the London Bridge train, and eighty people were injured, seven sustaining serious injuries. Another accident had occurred at Battersea Park in 1881.
On 2 April 1937, Battersea Park signal box was operated by Relief Signalman G. F. Childs, rather than the usual signalman (F. W. Harvey). Although Childs was a very experienced and well-respected signalman within the SR, and had been passed as competent to operate the box two weeks previously, this was the first time he had operated it unsupervised, and he had never operated it during the morning rush-hour. During the course of the morning, he made several mistakes, the last one of which was the direct cause of the accident.
The various boxes on this section of the railway used Sykes electromechanical "Lock and Block" interlocking, which used treadles to detect the presence of trains on the line rather than electrical track circuits, and prevented unsafe signal indications by mechanically locking the signal slides in the box, rather than interrupting an electrical circuit. A feature of the Sykes system was that the various actions needed to set up a route for a train and clear the appropriate signals had to be completed in the correct order, otherwise the apparatus would lock up and require releasing. On the boxes to the south of Battersea Park, the apparatus could be released by the signalman alone using a key, but Battersea Park and the boxes to the north required the signalman to request a release from the next box in the chain – for Battersea Park, this was Battersea Pier box. This procedure required the signalman making the request to send a bell signal, then for both signalmen to press the appropriate button in their respective boxes – the interlocking would only be released if both buttons were pressed simultaneously.
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