Report on the Level Crossing Accident that occurred on 16th April 1968 at Trent Road Public Level Crossing Beckingham in the Eastern Region British Railways

"Trent Road Crossing is protected by automatic half-barriers, which were working normally, and an Austin A.40 private saloon motor car, registration number MFJ 674, with five occupants was being driven towards it from the Down (Beckingham village) side when the warning lights began to flash and the half-barriers were automatically lowered across the two nearside halves of the road for the passage of a Down goods train. The car was halted clear of the Down side half-barrier and became the leading vehicle of a short queue of motor vehicles that formed up behind it: a similar queue, headed by a lorry, formed up behind the half-barrier on the Up (Gainsborough town) side of the crossing.

Meanwhile a 10-coach express passenger train hauled by a diesel engine was approaching the crossing on the Up line but not so closely as to prevent the half-barriers rising automatically behind the goods train and the warning lights ceasing to flash. As the half-barriers rose the lorry and the A.40 were driven onto the crossing from the Up and Down sides respectively but although the lorry crossed over safely the car stalled across the Up line in the path of the express train, which was now closely approaching and for which the warning lights had begun to flash and the half barriers then fell, the Up side half-barrier narrowly missing the lorry's tail. The car had a defective starter and its driver, unable to restart it, scrambled out quickly and tried to push it clear of the Up line but he failed to move it and it was struck by the express train, which was running under clear signals at some 60 m.p.h. ; it was pushed along the line for some 555 yards before the train came to a stand as a result of its driver's emergency application of its brakes.

The car was almost totally destroyed and I regret to report that its driver and his four passengers were killed. The train's engine was very little damaged and fortunately no-one on the train was injured."

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