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Charfield's railway children
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Charfield's railway children
Fifteen people were killed and 23 badly injured when a Leeds to Bristol mail train crashed in Charfield, which today lies on the border between Gloucestershire and South Gloucestershire.
Every year villagers in Charfield lay flowers at a memorial to those who died. But, in spite of the passing of the decades, nobody has ever been able to identify two of the victims of the carnage.
There have been plenty of theories bandied about the village since the crash, which happened in dense fog at about 5.30am on October 13, 1928. Were they men? Were they children? Or, bizarrely, were the charred remains nothing more than those of a ventriloquist's dummies?
More than 50 passengers were sleeping on the Leeds to Bristol night mail train as it headed for Charfield at 60mph.
The site of the Charfield rail crash, which claimed 15 lives.
In the village signal box signalman Henry Button accepted the mail train from the Berkeley Junction and put the distant signal to danger.
That should have halted the express until a freight train had reversed into sidings.
But driver Henry Aldington and his fireman, Frank Want, both read the distant signal as clear instead of danger and ran headlong into horror.
The goods driver had almost cleared the line when he saw the mail train bearing down on him.
The express crashed into the goods tender and then ploughed off the line and hit another empty goods train head on.
The engine of the express fell on its side among the splintered waggons and hot ashes sprayed from the firebox around the line.
It was an appalling scene as the tangled wreckage settled and the hiss of steam mingled with the desperate cries of the trapped and injured.
Moments later, the crash scene erupted into a ball of flame and became a furnace.
Gas, which fuelled lights in the coaches, escaped from supply pipes fractured in the impact.
As it came into contact with the hot ashes it turned the wrecked coaches into a massive funeral pyre.
Villagers awakened by the noise of the crash and the exploding cylinders raced along the cutting to find flames licking along the coaches where passengers were trapped.
Locals, railwaymen and passengers who had scrambled clear made frantic efforts to free those trapped by the fire.
Within 20 minutes the flames were leaping 40 feet high above the cutting and rescuers were driven back by the fierce heat.
Firemen from Bristol, Gloucester and Stroud fought the blaze for five hours before they were able to bring it under control.
But it was several hours after that before anyone could begin the grim task of sifting through the smouldering wreckage to recover bodies.
The victims who died were so badly mutilated that identification was almost impossible. In most cases it was the recognition of a ring, a watch, a cigarette case or a distinctive piece of clothing that put names to them.
But two small bodies remained unidentified and unclaimed in spite of worldwide inquiries.
Down the years, folklore and legend has built about who they were. The most popular belief is that they were children, but there have rumours that they were dwarfs, jockeys - even ventriloquist's dummies.
Then there are the stories of a mystery woman in black who paid several visits to the grave in which 12 of the victims are buried. The granite cross built as a memorial to the victims records ten names followed by the poignant inscription "two unknown".
Since the crash there have been occasional reports of sightings of the ghosts of Charfield's two lonely and lost railway children - often seen hand in hand near the site of the crash
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