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1895 St. Neots rail accident

rail accident

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionFeb 2, 2025
Entity authorityQ7590793 ↗
Source-derived summary

The St. Neots Derailment 1895 occurred near to St. Neots railway station on 10 November 1895 when a Great Northern Railway Scottish express from Kings Cross encountered a broken rail.

Derailment

The consist was of eight vehicles: a guard's van, a coach, a Pullman sleeping car (Iona), a corridor coach, another sleeping car, two further coaches and a final guard's van. It was carrying only twenty seven passengers.

At 23:30 on the night of 9 November 1895, the train left Kings Cross on time and proceeded at normal speed, which would have been about 50 mph (80 km/h). It was hauled by one of the GNR's latest and largest of its 8 foot singles, number 1006.

About 40 yards (37 m) south of St Neots, a broken rail derailed the train, the coupling of the second sleeping car parting. The rear part of the train veered to the left and struck a row of goods wagons in a siding to the north of the station. The forward part of the train came to a stand about 1⁄4 mile (400 m) further on.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “1895 St. Neots rail accident” as rail accident. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1895, 1006—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Neots, rail and accident can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as rail accident. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 2, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7590793. Authority coordinates are 52.232, -0.247. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1895 and 1006.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “1895 St. Neots rail accident” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.