Accident Returns: Extract for Accident at Brockley Whins on 6th December 1870

"it is now nearly 15 years since I first called attention to the danger which was involved in allowing facing points on railways to be inadvertently moved to the wrong position by the heedless act of a pointsman; and pointed out how, by connecting the points and signals by mechanical means, this class of accident might be altogether avoided; and it is more than fourteen years since my suggestion was acted upon, and means were actually devised for preventing them. For upward of 10 years the inspecting offirers have mostly insisted upon those means being made use of at the junction of new lines or branches joining existing lines before they would consent to recommend that the opening of these new lines should he sanctioned by the Board of Trade. This has been done, in some cases, up to a recent date, in the face of most strenuous opposition on the part of important railway companies. You are aware that, as regards lines of railway already open for traffic, the Board of Trade and the inspecting officers have no authority to interfere. Now, if the facing points at Brockley Whins station had been interlocked with the signals for the down mineral and up express passenger trains, the pointsman would have been prevented from making the mistake which he did respecting the facing points, and neither the down nor the up station signals would have been lowered for these trains to proceed past the station, until the facing points A and B had been properly closed for the cross-over road, and opened for the down and up lines on which the respective trains were to travel past Brockley Whins station; and this frightful collision could not hare taken place..."

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