Ashchurch Railway Disaster 1929.

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On the evening of January 8, 1929, a serious collision occurred in dense fog at Ashchurch station, near Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire. A London Midland and Scottish (L.M.S.) express mail train traveling from Bristol to Leeds ran into a goods train that was performing a shunting manoeuvre from the up to the down main line. 

Four people died and 25 were injured. Among the dead were, Driver Thomas Fredrick Crabtree, age 60 of 9 Holcombe Street, Derby and Fireman John William Lowes, age 32, of 55 Regent Street, Derby. 

Mr Crabtree had been employed by the railway for 40 years and had 36 years’ service as a driver. He was due to retire later in the year.

Fireman Lowes was supposed to be working the fire on the following train but had been taken ill at Bristol so was only on the train as a passenger. A native of Carlisle, he had lived in Derby since the end of the Great War when he moved to Derby to work for LMS. He fought in the war with the Machine Gun Corps.

The actual fireman on the express, George Cleverley, also from Derby, had a miraculous escape and remembered nothing after the shock of the impact. Francis Molson, front guard on the train, who lived at 21, Highfield Cottages, Chaddesden, also escaped without serious injury. He remembered falling through the bottom of the guard’s van.

Mr Crabtree’s funeral was at St. Thomas’s Church and Mr Lowes’ was at St. Andrew’s. At both funerals 6 colleagues carried the coffins.

The men were buried at Nottingham Road Cemetery, side by side, in first class graves purchased by L.M.S. Railway Company.