3-011-954 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Scene of the late accident at the Camden-road station of the North London Railway, 1864. 'Our Illustration...shows the place where the engine and tender, after being thrown up into the air by the boiler explosion, jumped off the viaduct, a depth of some five-and-thirty feet, descending in a vacant yard below...There the engine and tender still remained, covered up with a tarpaulin, at the time our sketch was taken...The engine, of course, was a perfect wreck; its chimney was knocked off, the doors of the smoke-box blown off, and its dome crushed in, and that portion of the boiler nearest the fire-box, which was the seat of the explosion, was also much injured...The stone coping and a portion of the brickwork of the buttresses at this end of the bridge over Randolph-street...were knocked away by the engine in its fall. As a proof that the engine mounted high into the air and turned completely round in falling, it may be mentioned that the telegraph wires of the station, which are some ten or fifteen feet above the line, were broken down, and communication on that particular side of the line was stopped...So little damage, however, was done to the railway itself that in rather more than an hour the traffic was resumed'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.