Anniversary - 13th October 1928 - accident at Charfield

[whole diary]

[grahame]

Long article in the Bristol Post. Also covered on the Charfield Community website

Overview from WikiPedia

The Charfield railway disaster was a fatal train crash which occurred on 13 October 1928 in the village of Charfield in the English county of Gloucestershire. The Leeds to Bristol London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS^▸ (London Midland Scottish - 1923 to 1948)) night mail train failed to stop at the signals protecting the down refuge siding at Charfield railway station. The weather was misty, but there was not a sufficiently thick fog for the signalman at Charfield to employ fog signalmen. A freight train was in the process of being shunted from the down main line to the siding, and another train of empty goods wagons was passing through the station from the Bristol (up) direction. The mail train collided with the freight train and was derailed, coming into collision with the up train underneath the road bridge to the north of the station.

[Robin Summerhill]

Being deeply involved in some genealogical research at the moment (and hence why I'm not posting on here as much as usual), on reading this thread I was reminded of a maiden aunt who frequently spoke about the two children who were killed in the collision and were never claimed. They are buried in Charfield churchyard.

An alternative theory was put forward that they were acually dwarfs who were part of a circus troupe but I don't know if the matter was ever fully resolved.

She also used to rabbit on quite frequently about the scuppering of the German fleet at Scapa Flow, and had a lot of deeply personal views about the parentage of Kaiser Bill as well.

You just don't get to have conversations like that with relations nowadays 


_{Unless I'm one of your relations...}