Quintinshill Rail Disaster

The Quintinshill rail disaster occurred on 22 May 1915 in Scotland near Gretna Green at Quintinshill, an intermediate signal box with loops on each side on the Caledonian Railway Main Line linking Glasgow and Carlisle (the line now forms part of the West Coast Main Line).

The crash, which involved five trains, killed a probable 230 and injured 246 and remains the worst rail crash in the United Kingdom in terms of loss of life. Those killed were mainly Territorial soldiers from the 1/7th (Leith) Battalion, the Royal Scots heading for Gallipoli. The precise number of dead was never established with confidence as the roll list of the regiment was destroyed by the fire.

The crash occurred when a troop train travelling from Larbert to Liverpool collided with a local passenger train that had been shunted on to the main line, to then be hit by an express train to Glasgow which crashed into the wreckage a minute later. Gas from the lighting system of the old wooden carriages of the troop train ignited, starting a fire which soon engulfed the three passenger trains and also two goods trains standing on nearby passing loops. A number of bodies were never recovered having been wholly consumed by the fire and the bodies that were recovered were buried together in a mass grave in Edinburgh's Rosebank Cemetery. Four bodies, believed to be of children were never identified or claimed and are buried in the Western Necropolis, Glasgow.

The cause of the accident was poor working practices on the part of the two signalmen involved which resulted in their imprisonment for culpable homicide after legal proceedings in both Scotland and England.

A memorial to the dead soldiers was erected soon after the accident and there are a number of more recent memorials at various locations. An annual remembrance service is held at Rosebank Cemetery.