Stafford rail crash (1996)
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On 8 March 1996, a Travelling Post Office mail train hauled by a Rail Express Systems British Rail Class 86 electric locomotive collided with the rear of a freight train at Rickerscote just south of Stafford. One person, a mail sorter was killed in the crash, and twenty two others including the driver of the mail train were injured.
The cause of the collision was the failure of a bearing in the axlebox of one of the tanker wagons of the freight train, which was carrying industrial acid. It caused the wagon and adjacent ones to derail, immediately into the path of the mail train, which was travelling at 60mph.
The driver of the mail train had no time to brake, and the force of the collision spun the locomotive around and catapulted it up the embankment, coming to rest against the end wall of a house.
A bearing failure on a tanker wagon was also the cause of the Summit tunnel fire of 1984.
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