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On 9 June 1865 Charles Dickens was travelling by train from Folkestone to London. Approaching the viaduct over the River Beult, just before Staplehurst, a tragic accident occured due to railway line repair work. Unfortunately ten passengers were killed, but Charles Dickens survived and took part in the rescue.
This cache is located adjacent to the railway line, on a footpath.
The Staplehurst Railway Disaster - 9 June 1865.
In 1865, with railways still in their infancy, safe operating principles still remained to be established and no effective method existed to contact workmen on the line. Where major work was being carried out, reliance was placed on notices to operating staff and strict adherence to the rulebook to ensure the safe passage of trains.
The London & South Eastern Railway (SER) operated a service to the coast to coincide with Channel crossings. Owing to the shallowness of the harbour at Folkestone at that time, the Steam Packets could only enter and leave at appropriate states of the tide. The connecting trains were therefore timed to coincide with these tides and the trains had become known by railwaymen as the “Tidals".
Near Staplehurst in Kent, the SER's line to Folkestone crosses the River Beult.
Called a river, it is little more than a stream and the viaduct bridge across it was only a few meters high. The line was carried over this cast iron structure on thirty-three transverse timber baulks, which had to be replaced, entailing the removal of the rails.
The work gang were charged with completing it between the passage of trains.
The foreman had used the normal method (of the time) to judge the distance at which to place his flagmen. He counted the regularly spaced telegraph poles, but did not realise that at this point on the line, they were placed much closer together than was usual. The result was that the flagman was stationed a mere 550 yards from the bridge. It was the foreman's plan to replace the final baulk between the up-train, due to pass at 2.51p.m. and the down-train (the ‘Tidal’) due to pass at 5.20pm.
Because the timings of the ‘Tidal’ Boat Trains differed each day, they were not published in the regular timetable. The foreman of the gang was aware of this, unfortunately, he looked up the wrong date in the special timetable. The ‘Tidal’ was in fact due two hours earlier!
The gang had finished placing the last timber and had only two lengths of rail to re-lay when the ‘Tidal’ approached the bridge. Travelling at full speed, some 50mph, the driver saw the flagman and heard the reports of the detonators. But, with just 550 yards, the primitive brakes of the train did little to arrest the express's motion before it reached the bridge. The locomotive reached the break in the rails and managed to remain upright as it jumped the gap, its wheels running on the timbers. The first vehicle, a luggage van followed suit. Then, a cast iron bridge support broke and fell into the stream leaving a void over which the first passenger coach, still coupled to the van was suspended. The next five coaches were less fortunate, plunging through the breach and crashing into the stream.
Ten passengers were killed and forty-nine were injured. Remarkably one of the survivors was the Victorian author Charles Dickens. He had been travelling in the first carriage and was reading through the manuscript of his novel 'Our Mutual Friend'.
Dickens took an active part in the rescue operations and the accident so influenced him that he wrote, in a postscript to the book:
“On Friday the ninth of June in the present year, Mr & Mrs … .were on the South Eastern Railway with me, in a terribly destructive accident. When I had done what I could to help others, I climbed back into my carriage - nearly turned over a viaduct, and caught aslant upon a turn - to extricate the couple. They were much soiled, but otherwise unhurt... I remember with devout thankfulness that I can never be much nearer parting company with my readers than I was then, until there shall be written against my life the two words with which I have today closed this book - The End”.
The cache is located adjacent to a Public Rights Of Way (PROW) reference KM297, one of the many fine footpaths in the parish of Staplehurst.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Onfr bs srapr cbfg, oruvaq zngher gerr - nobhg 30z sebz sbbgcngu