On the 28th of February, 1975, at Moorgate Tube Station in London the worst peacetime
accident ever to happen on the London Underground took place.
The cause of the devastating crash of a fully-loaded tube train was eventually found to be the
actions of a single man… but to this day exactly why he took those actions is still
a mystery.
The Northern City Line is a unique line on the London Underground network.
It was first opened in 1904, and was designed to allow the mainline trains which served
the rest of the UK to run directly into the heart of London.
Mainline trains were bigger than standard London Underground trains, and so for the
first few years of its operation the Northern City Line was colloquially referred to as
the “Big Tube”.
The Northern City Line changed hands many times over the years, and was eventually integrated
into the London Underground Network in the 1930s.
It was a busy line, running from Finsbury Park on the outskirts of Central London to
Moorgate in the very centre of the city.
Moorgate Station, then, was the terminus of the Northern City Line.
For trains pulling in to platform nine of the station, it was literally the end of the
line.
At the end of the platform the track continued only a short distance before ending in a concrete
wall.
This short length of extra tunnel was installed in case trains overshot the station.
In 1975 it was filled with a trough of sand to slow down any train that did enter, and
was also equipped with a mechanical buffer… although this was out of order at the time.
A red warning light illuminated the tunnel, making it absolutely clear to drivers that
it was a dead end.
Given that trains were mandated to enter the station at a maximum speed of 24 kilometres
(or 15 miles) per hour, it was a rare event for a train to overshoot into the runoff tunnel
by any distance at all.
The 28th of February started out as a very normal day for 56-year-old Leslie Newson.
He had been driving trains on the London Underground for six years, and during that time had garnered
a reputation as a careful and conscientious driver who always stuck to the rules.
That morning he got into work at just after 6:00am.
He had with him his work satchel, in which he’d packed his motorman’s rule book,
a notepad containing his personal notes on how to be a better driver, and his own supply
of milk and sugar for his morning cup of tea.
He also had with him £270 in cash, as he intended to go and finalise the purchase of
a car for his daughter once his shift was over.
To every colleague who saw Mr Newson that morning he appeared normal and cheerful.
When one man asked to borrow some of his sugar for their cup of tea, he agreed, but asked
them to “go easy on it,” saying, “I shall want another cup of tea when I come
off duty.”
Everything appeared normal as Mr Newson started work for the day.
He would be driving a train back and forth between Drayton Park and Moorgate, ferrying
up to 300 commuters into and out of the city with each trip.
After three trips back and forth, all was routine.
The train departed Drayton Park and made its way back to Moorgate for the last run of the
morning before Mr Newson was due to take a break.
It arrived at Moorgate at 8:46am… but unlike as in previous journeys, it did not slow or
stop when it entered the station.
It carried on at full speed through the station and into the run-off tunnel.
There, with no application of the brakes, it ploughed into the sand trough, smashed
through the non-functional buffers, and slammed into the concrete wall at the end of the tunnel.
The force of the impact was immense.
Passengers were flung to the front of their carriages, while the front of the train crumpled,
compressing down a space that had accommodated a dozen seats into a space the width of just
two seats in a single moment.
One survivor described their experience of the crash:
“Everybody sort of looked at each other and wondered what was happening and the next
you knew was the train suddenly came to a dead stop and I was flung forward about nine
or ten seats, and I landed with a group of people by the doors all on top of each other.”
Another survivor reported on the reaction of the passengers on board:
“It was pitch black.
People were picking themselves up, asking each other how they were.
A few people were moaning ‘help me’ and things like that… but most of all people
were saying ‘don’t panic’.
And they didn’t panic.”
While surviving passengers worked to keep one another calm, witnesses who had been standing
on the platform of Moorgate Station raised the alarm.
It took some time for appropriate help to arrive, with first responders initially believing
they were attending a train that had merely collided lightly with a set of buffers.
The first medical personnel on scene were a doctor and two nurses from the medical unit
of the nearby British Petroleum headquarters, who attended on foot after being contacted
by the police.
They quickly realised that they were ill-equipped for the scale of the disaster.
The doctor returned above ground and went to a nearby Boots high-street chemist, where
he successfully requisitioned their entire supply of morphine and other painkillers.
Even once firefighters and police were on scene, the rescue effort was an extremely
challenging one.
Not only was the space difficult to access, but it quickly became very hot as well.
The London Underground relies on the movement of trains through the system to push fresh
air into stations.
Following the crash, all movement on the line was halted, and with no fresh air being flushed
in, the temperature quickly rose to above 40 degrees Celsius (or 104 degrees Fahrenheit)
– a sweltering environment for firefighters and police to work in.
It was so hot, in fact, that rescuers were allowed only 20 minutes at a time in the tunnel
before they were required to come out and rest, lest they become casualties themselves.
Despite these impossible conditions, many people were extricated from the wreckage and
taken to nearby hospitals.
In total, 43 people died in the crash, and 74 were injured.
Over the course of several days following the accident, firefighters worked in painfully
hot conditions to cut through the wreckage and recover bodies, with the body of Mr Newson,
the driver, finally being recovered on the 4th of March.
In the aftermath of the disaster, many questions were left unanswered.
An investigation was carried out to try and determine what had caused the accident.
Suspicion quickly fell on Mr Newson.
Multiple witnesses who had been waiting at Moorgate Station noted that they had seen
Mr Newson at the controls of the train as it barrelled through without stopping.
He had, by all accounts, been sitting upright with his hands on the controls, conscious
and with his eyes wide open.
In addition to this, trains at the time were equipped with a “dead man’s handle”
– a lever that required constant pressure.
Should pressure against this lever ever cease, the train would automatically brake… but
tests showed that the dead man’s handle had been pushed forward until the very moment
of impact.
These two factors made it almost certain that Mr Newson had not fallen unconscious at the
controls.
The brakes were removed from the train, tested extensively, and found to be in full working
order.
Mechanical failure, then, was also ruled out.
It appeared that the train had been intentionally crashed by Mr Newson… but exactly why was
uncertain.
There was no indication that he should want to end his life: he had made plans (specifically
to purchase a car for his daughter) for later that day, and was a happy and contented man.
He rarely drank, and was an unusually careful and attentive driver.
Although his blood alcohol on post-mortem was found to be high, it was noted that this
might have been due to the process of decomposition his body had undergone before testing.
It would be extremely out of character for him to drink before a shift, and nobody had
noticed any odd behaviour that morning.
Additionally, even if he had been drunk to the level indicated by his post mortem blood
alcohol, it would not have explained his complete lack of reaction when passing through Moorgate
Station.
Though it is now impossible to confirm any theory, it is thought that Mr Newson might
have suffered a rare form of medical emergency while at the controls of the train.
Several kinds of seizure can take place that do not cause a person to lose consciousness,
but instead cause them to briefly lose awareness of where they are and what they are doing,
or to compulsively repeat the action they were taking when the seizure began.
The dead were honoured at a memorial service at St Paul’s Cathedral later in March of
that year.
Over two thousand people attended.
Many years later, in 2013, a memorial was erected close to Moorgate Tube Station, bearing
the names of those who died in the crash.
The Northern City Line continues to operate today, ferrying thousands of passengers to
their destination each week.
In the aftermath of the crash, a new automatic braking system was added.
Timed train stops on the track will now detect trains moving at excessive speed, and cause
them to automatically come to a stop if necessary.
Thanks to these changes, another accident like the Moorgate Tube crash is vanishingly
unlikely.
Though the exact cause remains unknown, proactive action has nonetheless been taken to prevent
a repeat of this tragedy.