Tragic Turning Point: The Armagh Rail Disaster

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While not blameless I feel really bad for the train driver here. He knew something would happen, despite he himself being new to the line. Now if only management would have listened to him about needing a bigger 6 drive wheel instead of the 4.

Imagine being in the driver's position. Objecting to the use of such a weak engine for the trip and being told to shut up if you want to keep your job and then being given part of the blame. SMH Very well done video! Also, like always, I'm impressed by the respect shown to the victims by having no commentary while their names are on screen. Class act!

This episode was especially engaging, and I was glued to the story. It was horrifying to hear that the train cars literally became tombs that passengers were locked in. If you ever do videos on dam breaches, consider the history of Johnstown, PA (where I grew up) It's a dying, rustbelt town that was destroyed by water THREE time times, in 1889, 1936 and 1977. We call it flood city.

Something not mentioned is that, in the course of the accident investigation, a rake of identical vehicles ballasted to the same weight was set rolling down the gradient, and the brake van was able to bring them to a stand, so Henry's failure to achieve that was inexplicable. The inspector could only surmise that the brake was not in proper working order, or it had somehow been tampered with by passengers in the van.

It doesn't really hit you until you see the names at 19:59 just how disastrous this was. Sad that it took this amount of loss of life to initiate permanent safety change when the only thing that prevented it previously was money.

I’m from Armagh and grew up not far from the old track bed and currently I live in Hamilton’s Bawn (Hamiltonsbawn). Although the line is long closed and the tracks lifted, the events of that day is not forgotten in Armagh and is still taught at local primary schools. Very well made and factually correct video.

"Red For Danger" by L T C Rolt is a defining publication in the history of railway accidents in Britain. What really comes across is the casual dismissal of any safely thinking in the early days of railways and how many innocents died in the companies' pursuit of profits at the expense of safety.

Twenty years before in 1869, George Westinghouse invented the Fail-safe brake system for trains. The brakes are engaged always and needed pressure from the engine to release. That way when a hose was uncoupled anywhere, the brakes would engage. Every car has brakes also. This system is still used today and a similar system is used on big trucks. Pity this train didn't have them.

An interesting change in direction. Thanks for drawing attention to this largely forgotten disaster.

Interesting facts - even as late as the 1950's many British freight cars still had no vacuum brakes at all, and the UK was still using primitive hook and loop couplers. Also somewhat surprisingly the US, dispute the number of wrecks, never really got into the ultra high fatality count range. In the US automatic air brakes (loss of elevated air pressure applies brakes) were made mandatory in 1903, along with modern knuckle couplers, for both freight and passenger cars. Of course, the British-style hook and loop couplers were at least safe for the one doing the coupling, while the link and pin couplers the US used prior to 1903 were very much not, and killed and maimed countless brakemen, and far more lost fingers. The US also adopted all-steel passenger cars a few decades before everybody else. They were very heavy (80 tons each), but by that point American locomotives were big enough to pull trains of them at high speed, and in a wreck would stay intact practically no matter what. You could argue they were sturdier than many modern cars used in much of the world. Also, if you want to do a Collapse/this series combination, might I recommend Ashtabula bridge collapse? PS: What are use using to make the train graphics? Microsoft Train Simulator or Trainz? The latter is far more likely to have exactly what you're looking for already made. If you're making your train rendering from scratch, than you could really save a lot of time and effort using it.

I didn't think this could possibly get worse, but then you mentioned that all the passengers were locked in...

You might want to look up the Lac Megantic train crash. It was quite an unfortunate even back a few years ago in Canada It's a similar story IIRC it was due to negligence which caused a train to go down a hill unsupervised and derail in the middle of a small town. Unfortunately, the train was carrying a lot of flammable products which quickly caught fire and exploded.

After reading the book 'The runaway train, Armagh 1889' I have stood on the Killuney road looking at that embankment and often wondered what it would have been like to have been there in 1889, your video really shows what happened on that day.

I'm from Northern Ireland. Kinda surreal seeing a video on your channel about the wee green island, and not too far away from where I am. Good job!

Aside from the narration, the graphics quality on this video alone, are the kind you would normally only see on a channel with close to a million subscribers. WELL DONE!

I watched a channel 4 documentary on this accident and your editing and animations were 1000 times better. I didn't know what happened to the train that got hit. That was very interesting to find out.

My great grandmother was on that trip as a baby, but luckily in the front carriages that were still attached to the train.

Nice combination of historical footage and modern animation 👌

This story to me is one of the most fascinating tales of tragedy, I've been obsessed with it since I learned about it as a kid. Fantastic video and included some facts I'd never heard before too. Thank you for helping more people learn of this tale.