Parkgate and Rawmarsh railway station has a paragraph about the 1926 accident sourced to "Earnshaw, Alan (1993). Trains in Trouble: Vol. 8. Penryn: Atlantic Books. ISBN 0-906899-52-4", which states that there were 11 fatalities. However theofficial report states only 9 fatalities. I don't have a copy of Earnshaw and haven't found a preview online to verify what it says.Thryduulf (talk)12:46, 13 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Thryduulf: Earnshaw does stateclaimed 11 lives; but errors have been detected in theseTrains in Trouble books before. I'm not sure if they're reliable enough. Most accidents get one or two pages (each page is about 8 inches square) and about two-thirds is photos, one third text. I'll bring them along on Sunday so you can see what sort of source they are. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk)22:14, 14 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
A week after the incident, theSouth Yorkshire Times and Mexborough & Swinton Times ran this article;
“
THE TIMES. FRIDAY. NOVEMBER 26, 1926. (Photo: J.T.W.) PARKGATE RAILWAY SMASH. Express Fouled by Coal Wagon. NINE PASSENGERS KILLED. On Friday last nine passengers were killed and six injured in a terrible smash on the London Midland and Scottish Railway line at Parkgate.[1]
The official report is dated 13 January 2027, almost two months later. It seems unlikely that two people would succumb to injuries more than two months after the crash without a mention in official report of anyone still in hospital (reports in those days gave much more information of that sort than modern ones do). At the moment I'm inclined to change the article to state 9, citing the official report, but add a footnote saying Earnshaw gives the total as 11. I'll have a look at the book on Sunday before doing so though.Thryduulf (talk)16:08, 15 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Having had the opportunity yesterday to read the passage in Earnshaw (thank you @Redrose64) and to compare it with the official report, I am not convinced that Earnshaw is a fully reliable source. Not only does it misstate the number of deceased but it also misrepresents the cause, implying that an intermediate consequence (spilling of coal from the bottom of a wagon) was responsible for the sequence of events rather than the condition of the coupling and headstock which caused the wagon to be pulled apart. It was this pulling-apart of the wagon which resulted in both the spillage of coal and part of the wagon to contact a passing train and it was the contact that resulted in the subsequent parts of the accident sequence not the spillage of coal.
Accordingly I'm just going to correct the statement about the number of deceased, remove Earnshaw as a source and replace it with the official accident report. I'll link to this discussion in my edit summary.Thryduulf (talk)13:30, 19 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
References
^"Parkgate railway smash".South Yorkshire Times and Mexborough & Swinton Times. No. 3121. 26 November 2026. p. 6.OCLC749945182.
I have updated the pages related to Mark 5A coaches. However the edit was reverted because it had no source that was reliable (seethis thread). Ifyou go here, you can find the official announcement by Chiltern Railways of the new coaches. Scroll down to FAQ and click on "Which services will these trains run on?", it says: "Our Chiltern Explorer trains will launch on Monday 26th January on four weekday services between Birmingham Moor Street and London Marylebone. The remaining trains will be introduced at different stages through 2026."
Apparently this won't work as perWP:CRYSTAL. So, can some of you help me to find a source that confirms the passenger service of these new coaches? This is pretty annoying as I have uploaded and added all the new pictures, I am currently trying to get my edits re-published as soon as possible.Fortek67 (talk)19:33, 26 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Just to reply to the message you left atUser talk:10mmsocket - There's absolutely no harm in updating the images to show newer ones, provided the quality is good (I have no doubt they are, I just haven't seen them!), and changing the text to say something likeplanned to enter service on 26 January 2026 is absolutely fine - indeed that's exactly what the source you give says.Danners430tweaks made20:44, 26 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Well... I saw some in the depot at Banbury today, and the Chiltern Railways marketing staff are having a big publicity thing on the bridge at Banbury. I got a free tote bag of goodies (pen, coaster, USB cable, box of jelly beans in the shape of a DBSO) from them. There's an amplified busker too. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk)13:05, 27 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
My bad, I thought you said that the train had 3 coaches. The Mark 5As will come into full service within the next month, with the farewell tour of the Mark 3planned on 22 February 2026.
Also, this doesn't change anything. Even look at the page for theDocklands Light Railway, the newB23 Stock is shown in the infobox as the second picture, despite not even being in full service. In fact, it has been temporarily withdrawn due to a fault. It will come back into service soon though.Fortek67 (talk)22:17, 27 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
They're introducing them one diagram at a time. The first one is the diagram that starts on the 08:15 from Brum and ends on the 16:37 MYB-SBJ, and is 68022 today. When the four Mk3 diagrams are all covered, they'll move onto replacing some of the 168s.Black Kite (talk)08:28, 29 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I think one article per British rail class is a good standard. When the Hitachi A-class was first brought to the UK it would have been reasonable to suggest a single article for the class 800/801/802 but it's good that they've been kept separate as otherwise it would have just led to a later split. Now we have 800, 801, 802, 803, 805, 807, 810 – would someone still be arguing they ought to be one article to this day?JacobTheRox(talk | contributions)21:38, 2 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
TheWelshampton rail crash article gives the number of deaths as 12, including the sentenceNine passengers were killed in what was the first fatal accident on the line since it was built. Two other passengers and a railway employee died later from injuries. Theofficial report however gives the figure as 11,There were about 330 passengers in the train, of whom nine were killed on the spot, two others fatally wounded and 15 injured [...] The drivers and firemen escaped unhurt, and the Cambrian guard received only a few cuts and bruises, but one of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Company's guards was seriously injured. It makes no mention of this guard subsequently dying. The sole online source[3] cites 11 deaths, but there are three book sources I don't have access to from which the figure may have come:
Faith, Nicholas (1998).Derail: Why Trains Crash. Channel 4 Books.ISBN0-752-21987-1.
Foley, Michael (2014).Britain's Railway Disasters: Fatal Accidents from the 1830s to the Present. Pen & Sword Books Ltd.ISBN978-1-781-59379-0.
Johnson, Peter (2013).The Cambrian Railways: A New History. Oxford Publishing Company.ISBN978-0-860-93644-2.
I've not been able to find anything else online that verifies the article's sentence about the death of a railway employee, but it presumably came from somewhere?Thryduulf (talk)20:31, 6 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Page 16 of the official report has an addendum with a statement from the guard dated 23rd July, so I suspect it is unlikely that he died from his injuries. Also, the memorial stone at Welshampton station says "This stone commemorates the accident in which 11 lives were lost..." The memorial stone at Royton also has 11 names on it. However, the story with the image of the Welshampton stone, again says 12, like the article (even though the stone says 11!).[4]Black Kite (talk)23:41, 6 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I haveDerail: Why Trains Crash but there's no mention in the index of any likely keywords (Welshampton, Barmouth, Royton). I would need to read the book through to find it. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk)00:03, 7 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Bordesley station is on theChiltern Main Line which passes under the CHL, the chords would connect the CHL to the Chiltern Line at about the position of Bordesley station, which is why it's suggested that it would have to either close or be relocated. Maybe that's not clear enough. I didn't write the current wording of that section.G-13114 (talk)15:11, 11 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Murgatroyd49: I don't know why a non-standard colour has been chosen. There is no legend. I suspect it's been done to fit in with some branding scheme or other, which is not what we usually do: if the branding changes, it will require extra work to change a load of diagrams. I'd be in favour of changing it to the standard route template colour scheme which everyone understands. (That's an easy change which I'm willing to do if nobody else wants to.)Bazza 7 (talk)17:35, 11 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Precedent allows for lines run by devolved or semi-devolved transport bodies to use a different colour scheme (see the underground route maps). The rail lines in the West Midlands (county) essentially operate as a regional s-bahn.Oldhamtw (talk)18:03, 11 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I've changed the colours back to the default heavy rail icons. In my opinion, use of the "other colours" is best reserved for diagrams with different "lines" such as an entire metro network, or systems with multiple gauges in a single diagram, such as Asutralia. -=# Amos E Wolfetalk #=-20:32, 11 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
_(1).jpg){kind=link}
Mjroots (talk)16:45, 11 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]