Hixon rail crash
On 6 January 1968, a low-loader transporter carrying a 120-ton electrical transformer was struck by a British Rail express train on a recently installed automatic level crossing at Hixon, Staffordshire, England. The collision resulted in eleven deaths and 45 people injured, and led to improvements in signage around automatic level crossings. Background In the 1950s, British Railways found that the cost of manning some 2,400 level crossings had risen past £1 million per annum, with some locations seeing a tenfold increase. In the postwar labour market it was often difficult to recruit crossing keepers, the job itself being a responsible but rather dull occupation. In addition, manually operated crossings often caused long delays to road traffic because of the need to close the gates and clear the distant signal before the approaching train reached it. In October 1956, senior members of Her Majesty's Railway Inspectorate (HMRI) embarked on a fact-finding trip to the Netherlands, Belgium and France, to investigate the practice of automating level crossings. Their subsequent report recommended the introduction of automatically operated crossings with half-barriers, known as AHBs. This was projected to give considerable cost savings through the withdrawal of crossing keepers and would also speed up the flow of road traffic; the crossing being closed for less than a minute as opposed to 3 or 4 minutes at staffed crossings. Safety requirements were drawn up in 1957, but it was not until 1961 that the first automatic crossing in Britain was installed at Spath, near Uttoxeter. The crossing was designed to give a minimum of 24 seconds warning for the fastest train on that line. By January 1968 there were 207 automatic crossings in Britain including the one at Hixon, which had been converted to automatic half-barrier operation in July 1967. Incidentally, Hixon was only eight miles (13 km) from the pioneering installation at Spath. Low-loader movements On 6 January 1968, a 120-ton electrical transformer was to be moved from the English Electric works at Stafford to a storage depot at the disused RAF Hixon airfield. The airfield was on Station Road, adjacent to the Manchester branch of the West Coast Main Line and approximately three miles (5 km) north of Colwich Junction. To carry out this move a huge transporter vehicle, long and with a 32-wheeled trailer, was chartered. It had a gross weight of 162 tons, was impelled by a tractor unit at each end, and had a crew of five. In charge of the vehicle was B. H. Groves, who occupied the leading cab. The journey was not an unusual procedure as six other abnormal loads belonging to the English Electric Company had passed over the automatic crossing in the preceding months. The transporter and its police escort left Stafford at approximately 09:30 on the morning of Saturday 6 January. Although Hixon was only six miles (10 km) from Stafford, the nature of the load meant that it needed to travel south out of the town and then along a somewhat laborious route north