大象传媒 Radio Ulster - Stories in Sound, An Accident Waiting to Happen, 1. Mark Kennedy explains how economies made by the Belfast and Co. Down Railway in the 1920s contributed to the crash

1. Mark Kennedy explains how economies made by the Belfast and Co. Down Railway in the 1920s contributed to the crash

The Ballymacarrett railway accident on Wednesday, 10th January 1945 was the worst in Ireland since the Armagh disaster of 1889.

However as John Bennett discovered from Mark Kennedy, Curator of Transport at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, the seeds were sown for the Ballymacarrett crash as far back as the 1920s. In the years following the First World War the financial fortunes of the Belfast and Co. Down Railway took a turn for the worse. Economies had to be made and, as Mark explains, one of these economies involved the introduction of automatic signalling and a new regulation governing its use. That regulation, it turned out, would prove to be fatal.

28 February 2016