Moorgate Tube crash
Moorgate Tube crash, train crash on February 28, 1975, at Moorgate station in the London Underground system. It killed 43 people and injured many more, making it the system’s deadliest peacetime disaster.
The Moorgate station, in central London, was the southern terminus of the Northern City Line, which ran five stops from its northern end, at Drayton Park; from there passengers could transfer to various above-ground lines and buses. In 1975 the subway train used platform 9, one of 10 platforms. Because it was the terminus, the end of the platform had a warning light, sand drag, and overrun tunnel. February 28, 1975, was a Friday. The train, part of the morning rush hour, left Drayton Park at 8:38 AM, carrying about 300 people, and it reached Moorgate at 8:46 AM.
Instead of stopping, the six-car train accelerated past the platform into the 66-foot (20-meter) -long overrun tunnel and slammed into a brick wall. It would have been catastrophic under any circumstances, but the overrun tunnel was built to accommodate full-size railway cars, rather than the smaller cars used by the London Tube system, which allowed the first three cars to ride up over each other. The first was crushed into a V-shape, the second car rode under the first, pushing the end of the first car into the roof, and the third car rode over the top of the second.
The Moorgate crash was caused by the driver’s failure to apply the train’s brakes. Now all dead-end stops on the London Underground are fitted with a device known as a Moorgate control (or Moorgate protection) that automatically stops a train if the driver fails to do so.
Wreckage and thick dust filled the confined space, presenting emergency services with a daunting challenge. Visibility was poor, and the rescue efforts both increased the temperature and decreased oxygen. The final survivor was freed about 13 hours after the crash, and the body of driver Leslie Newson was recovered more than four days later. He was the last of 43 confirmed fatalities.
It was quickly determined that there was nothing mechanically wrong with the train and that the cause of the disaster was simply that Newson had failed to brake. The reason for that, however, was never established. It was determined that he had not released the dead man’s switch, a device that must be physically depressed to maintain power to the trains. Alcohol found in his blood system could be explained by postmortem processes. The best explanations seem to be suicide, though he carried the money with which he planned to buy a car for his daughter at the end of his shift, or a rare type of brain seizure wherein the victim is conscious but momentarily paralyzed. The coroner’s jury settled for a verdict of accidental death, and the official accident report cited human error.