Accident Returns: Extract for the Accident at Ardwick on 22nd October 1860

"On the day in question, a heavy excursion train, consisting of two engines and 38 vehicles, left Longsight at 11.40 a.m. on its way towards Manchester, and stopped at the Ardwick platform for the collection of the tickets. A goods engine and seven waggons, three of them loaded with coals for the supply of the locomotive department, and four empty for the goods yard, followed it five minutes afterwards. The driver of this engine found the distant signal from the junction at "danger," and he whistled and drew slowly within it, coming to a stand about 100 yards from the hind van of the excursion train, which was nearly 300 yards long, and bringing his own waggons 280 or 300 yards inside of the distant signal. This driver, after taking his waggons to their destinations, was to start from Manchester at noon with a goods train for Macelesfield. He had hardly stopped his train in the above position, when his brakesman and an extra fireman, who had been riding together in the hind waggon, an empty high-sided waggon, came running towards him, and shouting to him to go ahead. He turned on his steam as quickly as he could, and, indeed, without sufficient deliberation, for his engine, in springing forward, fractured the coupling by which it was attached to the leading waggon, and therefore left its waggons behind it. Immediately afterwards he heard a crash, and he found that a following train had come into collision with them."

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