Thirty years ago today, on 8th January 1991, I had been working at the Network South East rolling stock drawing office at Kings Cross for less than a year. At about 10am someone popped their head round the door to say that we were needed at Cannon Street station.
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Back in those days the DO and specialist engineers from KX attended rail accidents to record the layout of vehicles, test brakes, etc. These were the days before the @raibgovuk.
I had never attended such an incident so I accompanied experienced colleague Martin.
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We waited a couple of hours whilst the emergency services did their work. We were allowed onto the platforms early afternoon. It was a shocking sight. I took some photos and we carried out our surveying work. I got home late that evening.
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Back home, my dad told me that one of my gricing/drinking mates had phoned a couple of times but was going to call again later – no mobile phones then, of course! When he phoned again he was rather sombre, with some news from another gricing/drinking mate.
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My mate's brother had been on the 07:58 Sevenoaks to Cannon Street and was the one person who died that day, on route to hospital. A tragic day in my career that I will never forget.
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Coaches 5 & 6 of the train (SR design 4EPB, unit 5484) suffered the worst damage – the solebar of coach 6 (15308) had buried itself beneath the solebar of coach 5 (14046), which had pushed back into the saloon of coach 6 like a battering ram.
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Drawings of the site, created from the information that we recorded that day, included:
NSE/D/540 - Diagram of Collision
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... and
NSE/F/541 - Formation of Train; used to show seating layouts for those carrying out further investigations and enquiries.
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