GREAT ARMAGH TRAIN DISASTER (2)

As the driver set off with the front portion of the train, the engine rolled back slightly before gathering forward momentum. This was enough to crush the few miserable stones set under the rear van's wheels, and before the full implications had fixed themselves into the minds of the crew, the last ten carriages slowly start to slip imperceptively backwards before starting to run away down the incline. The crew were seized with panic as the carriages gathered momentum, any remnants of common sense which might have saved the day disappeared along with the train back down the hill.

Meanwhile the 10.35 from Armagh was setting off. Murphy the driver had already seen the excursion train leave earlier and had remarked that his own powerful engine would have no trouble in taking the fifteen carriages over the bank. As they approached the bank they were appalled to see the ten carriages careering backwards towards them at 20-30 mph with people jumping off the running boards and children being thrown from the windows of the locked carriages. They tried everything they could to reduce the speed of their own engine, but only managed to succeed in reducing it to 5 mph. By now the runaway train was travelling at 40 mph and the following train could not stop its own forward movement towards the final collision. The final three carriages and occupants were completely destroyed. It was a scene of total carnage with the dead and injured flung about in all directions.

All in all eighty people died that day, twenty of them children under 15 years of age. Officially there were also 170 others injured, but unofficially this total could have been as high as 400. The distress caused by the poignancy of so many deaths particularly of children dressed in their 'Sunday Best' who had so been looking forward to their day at the seaside, proved very difficult ot overcome. Paddy Murphy who drove the 10.35 scheduled train from Armagh never worked again.

My own great, great grandmother Matilda Robinson(nee Lynton) died that day aged 50. I wonder if this could have been the event which drew my great grandparents together, since the Royal Irish Fusiliers had been called out to deal with the aftermath.