Terribly Tired: The 2001 Great Heck Train Crash
By: Max S
Tags: Accident, Traffic, England, Trains, Railways

On the day of the accident the train carried a driver, two crew members in the passenger cars and 99 passengers, a low number due to the early departure (4:45am) from Newcastle. Responders later applied letters to each of the passenger cars to easier identify them in the wreckage. Starting behind the DVT those were:

Coach M First Class 46 seats Coach H First Class 46 seats Coach G Service Vehicle Coach F Second Class 72 seats Coach E (labelled B for some reason) Second Class 72 seats Coach D Second Class 72 seats Coach C Second Class 72 seats Coach B Second Class 72 seats Coach A Second Class 72 seats (end) Class 91 locomotive number 91023

Class 91 91023, the locomotive pushing the train on the day of the accident, in its pre-GNER livery in March 1995.

Travelling in the opposite direction was freight train 6G34, a sixteen-car freight train operated by the Freightliner-Group, a London-based freight train service provider not to be confused with the North American heavy vehicle brand “Freightliner Trucks”, which is a Daimler AG subsidiary. Running from the Immingham docks on the eastern coast to Eggborough power station the train carried coal, bringing each of the cars to a weight of 102 metric tons including 74 metric tons of coal. Pulling the heavy freight train was a British Rail Class 66 (also called EMD Class 66), a six-axle diesel-electric freight locomotive introduced in 2000. Weighting 129.6 metric tons at 21.4m/70ft long the Class 66 has an output of 2460kw/3200hp from a centrally mounted 139.2 liter two-stroke diesel V12 allowing speeds of up to 105kph/65mph despite the incredibly high weight of the trains it usually pulled.

A Freightliner coal train identical to the one involved in the accident.

The accident

On the 28th of February 2001 at approximately 6:05am Mister Hart was driving his Land Rover 110 westbound on the M62 motorway, approaching the bridge over the ECML just north of the town of Great Heck. As he drove along in the left-most lane (in Great Britain one drives on the left side of the road) his car, towing the trailer with the Renault Savanna, slowly crossed the paved shoulder/breakdown lane, mounted the curb and headed down the grassy embankment towards the train tracks. Travelling a little over 115m/378ft the car and trailer covered a downhill height-difference of approximately 3.5m/12ft, coming to a stop 11m/36ft south of the M62 bridge. Had the car left the road a little later or at a sharper angle the accident could’ve been avoided, as the path it took had it narrowly miss the beginning safety-barrier meant to protect the rail line. Breaking through two minor fences and some bushes the car and trailer jackknifed (describing the process of an excessive angle, causing the corner of the trailer to hit the towing vehicle) and separated. The trailer dug into the soft soil and came to a stop at the bottom of the embankment while the Land Rover ended up getting stuck with its forward section on the southbound track, being beached on the rails. The Renault had partially slipped off the trailer and was blocking the right hand (British driver’s side) door of the Land Rover without occupying the track itself.

Photos from the report showing the marks of the Land Rover’s tires leaving the road.

Finding himself unable to reverse off the train tracks or proceed over them to the other side Mister Hart abandoned his car through the left hand door, distanced himself from both the cars as well as the railway line and called the emergency services. At the same time the IC225 is approaching the overpass from the north at approximately 210kph/130mph with 99 passengers on board, many of whom had only boarded the train about 12 minutes earlier at York station. GNER senior conductor Mister Robson has just started checking the tickets in the forward part of the train as the DVT reaches the motorway overpass. The driver sees the light grey car in his path and triggers an emergency stop, but he likely knew the train was doomed.

At 6:13am Mister Hart’s call to the emergency services connects, before he says a single word one can hear the train brakes screetch, followed by a deafening crash as the DVT tears through the Land Rover at 200kph/125mph. The impact of the DVT’s left-hand buffer into the land rover behind the front wheel rips the car’s body in two as the car is spun 495 degrees (almost 1.5 rotations), ripping the section ahead of the rear seats off the car’s frame. The impact rips the engine out of the car, throwing it clear of most of the Land Rover’s wreckage which spreads out over 150m/492ft of railway track.

A graphic from the report showing the wreckage of the Land Rover after the accident.

Investigators later find out that, most likely, a piece of debris from the obliterated car gets forced under the right hand leading wheels of the DVT, lifting it out of the track. Had this not happened, the whole thing could have been over with no fatalities and only minor injuries, at worst. The way it did happen the derailing DVT began to pull the rest of the train off the tracks to the right an angle of 6–9 degrees off the straight line. It slowly moved towards the oncoming track, where the northbound coal train just came into view. Due to its high velocity the Intercity passed under Pollington Lane Bridge, a small road overpass approximately 565m/1853ft south of where the DVT had struck the Land Rover, as it reached the oncoming track and with that the coal train.

The nose of the DVT, by then decelerated (according to calculations) to 142kph/88mph barely passed the oncoming freight train, which was moving at 86kph/54mph and already decelerating as it approached a slower speed zone. Striking the DVT just behind the driver’s cabin the Class 66, being a considerably higher-riding vehicle, mounted and and passed over the DVT’s frame, cutting the driver’s cabin clean off the DVT. The DVT’s leading bogie was torn off and thrown from the wreckage also, while part of the Class 66’s leading bogie became detached and penetrated the forward right hand side of the leading passenger car (Coach M). Getting stuck there it scraped along the Class 66’s fuel tank, causing fuel oil to spray onto the forward cars of the Intercity. Both locomotives derailed further, pulling all their cars along. The rapidly slowing DVT was rear-ended by the leading passenger car, tearing the coupler and shearing off what was left of the DVT’s body’s rear section. In a similar fashion the leading freight car became lodged underneath the rear of the Class 66, lifting its remaining wheels off the ground and turning it into a fast, heavy sledge.

With its front jammed under the Class 66 the DVT was forced to rotate clockwise, taking the leading end of coach M with it and mowing down a support pole for the overhead wire just south of Pollington Lane Bridge. Car H, the second passenger car, struck the underside of Pollington Lane Bridge, the impact-shock traveled down the length of the train and caused the cars to collide with one another. Car G, the service car, got forced up against the northern edge of the underpass, flattening the front half and ripping the roof off the remainder, before the following car’s roof was torn open also. An unnamed passenger later recalled sitting at a table inside car G, having just ordered a coffee when he felt a rumble, saw dust fly up outside the windows (displaced ballast as the train derailed) and then being violently thrown across the car before slamming into a wall and looking up at clear sky as the roof had been torn off. He survived, the attendant he had ordered the coffee from did not as he had been in the crushed section of the car.

A photo from the report showing the destroyed service car sitting in the wreckage.

Managing to separate from the wreckage of the Class 66 the severely damaged DVT left the tracks and moved down the embankment, pulling the jammed-on car M which was still coupled to car H with it. Mister Robson was thrown from the train as he tried to the third car, his sister would later say she has to try and find comfort in the fact that he probably died in an instant before he could know what happened or suffer any pain. The remains of the DVT, barely resembling what it used to look like, came to a rest in a field some 105m/345ft south of Pollington Lane Bridge.

The remains of the DVT (bottom) compared to an intact unit (top) as pictured in the report.

The rest of the train broke up, with car G (the bistro/service car) hitting the third freight car head-on, forcing the following second class passenger car into the second freight car. Suffering severe damage in the impacts the two passenger cars rotated off the track, coach F forcing its following car (E) upside down as it rolled over. Remaining upside down coach F slid across the adjacent field until it struck coach G, squashing the rear half of the service car. In the process it was severely buckled, eliminating survival space as the floor met the roof in the right forward section in an area stretching from the forward end of the car 12 seats far down the side of the car.

The Class 66 locomotive proceeded to cross underneath the bridge, scraping along the roof of the underpass, still travelling northbound but severely damaged and completely derailed. It made contact with the remaining cars and locomotive of the Intercity before leaving the tracks to the left (west), falling on its side and sinking into the soft soil of an adjacent garden, coming to a stop 55m/181ft north of the Bridge. Within seconds, two large trains, a car and trailer with another car had turned into a field of debris approximately 725m/2378ft long. Both drivers, two of the Intercity’s crew members and six passengers were killed in crash, while 52 passengers survived with severe injuries.

Aftermath

Alarmed by Mister Hart and subsequently by residents and survivors emergency services began to reach the scene at 6:33 am, the first one being Humberside Fire Service responding to the location of Mister Neil’s emergency call. He had called about his car being stuck on tracks/struck by a train, and would repeatedly claim to be unaware of what had unfolded down the line. While he soon saw himself under arrest and removed from the scene responders set up temporary headquarters at the nearby Heck Hall farm, which is also where the survivors and victims were brought. Two Royal Airforce helicopters from RAF Leconfield aided in the transport of survivors, along with a civilian rescue helicopter.

An aerial photo of the main wreckage, givig an idea of the forces involved in the collision.

The responders saw themselves faced with a chaotic field of debris, hearing and seeing survivors all over the place while also having to deal with snow and freezing weather as well as the muddy field that you sunk into if you stopped walking for too long. Miss Dunn, the widow of the freight train’s driver, would see the site in person the next day and liken it to a giant walking through a model train display and kicking train cars left and right, stepping on a few in the process. Her husband was one of the victims of the crash while an instructor riding with him miraculously survived the disaster, likely because he had been on the other side of the cab.

The Freightliner-locomotive sitting in a garden after the crash (top) and after being recovered (bottom).

The large number of responders combined with the low passenger-number allowed a relatively fast rescue/recovery operation, the whole wreckage was declared cleared by 12:45pm. An unusual aspect of the emergency response was the need to set up disinfecting procedures for anyone on site due to the foot and mouth epidemic in existence throughout much of the UK at the time of the incident.

Mister Hart was charged with ten counts of causing death by dangerous driving, charges he vehemently denied. He insisted that a technical fault had occurred on his car, causing it to suddenly veer off the road and down the hillside. Doubting this, in part due to the angle of the tracks found in the grass between the road and rail line, investigators combed through the scene to collect as much of the Land Rover as they could find. Reconstructing the vehicle the only flaw found was a pierced front tire, which was traced to the car breaking through a wooden fence on its way down the hillside. The Land Rover ending up on the tracks was found to be the cause of the catastrophe, with neither train driver having any chance to avoid the unfolding events and being posthumously cleared of wrongdoing of any kind.