6 / 32
4
quintinshill rail disaster
BRITAIN’S GREATEST RAIL DISASTER
At 6.49am on Saturday 22 May 1915
a Liverpool-bound troop-train
carrying half (498 all ranks) of the 1st/7th (Leith) Battalion, The Royal
Scots (The Royal Regiment) (1/7RS) collided head on with a local passenger
train which had been‘parked’,facing north,on the south-bound main line at
Quintinshill just North of Gretna, to allow a following express to overtake
it. Normally the local train would have been held in one of the loops at
Quintinshill but both of these were already occupied by goods trains.
The troop train overturned, mostly onto the neighbouring north-bound
mainline track and, a minute later, the Glasgow-bound express ploughed
into the wreckage causing it to burst into flames.