Worst accidentsThe worst accident was the Quintinshill rail disaster in Scotland in 1915 with 226 dead and 246 injured. Second worst, and the worst in England, was the 1952 Harrow and Wealdstone rail crash, which killed 112 people and injured 340.
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Worst accidentsThe worst accident was the Quintinshill rail disaster in Scotland in 1915 with 226 dead and 246 injured. Second worst, and the worst in England, was the 1952 Harrow and Wealdstone rail crash, which killed 112 people and injured 340.
Nonetheless, the blemishes on the record have been appearing with concerning regularity in recent years. Until 2020, the 2007 derailment in Grayrigg was the last time a passenger died in a UK train crash – a huge turnaround after a succession of terrible accidents in the days of Railtrack around the millennium.
The Ladbroke Grove rail crash was a rail accident which occurred on 5 October 1999 at Ladbroke Grove in London, England, when two passenger trains collided almost head-on after one of them had passed a signal at danger.
The 2004 Sri Lanka tsunami train wreck is the largest single rail disaster in world history by death toll, with 1,700 fatalities or more. It occurred when a crowded passenger train (No 50, Matara Express) was destroyed on a coastal railway in Sri Lanka by a tsunami that followed the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake.
All train crashes are tragic, but the Malbone Street Wreck is commonly considered the worst train crash in American history. On November 1, 1918, a packed Brighton Beach-bound train was speeding through a tunnel under Brooklyn's Malbone Street.
In June 1998, a high-speed train traveling at 200 kph (125 mph) collided with a bridge at Eschede, Germany, causing it to collapse, a crash that killed 101 people and injured more than 100.
Compare it to other major forms of transportation – with 0.04 deaths per 100 million miles traveled, train travel is much more dangerous than airplanes' 0.01 deaths per 100 million miles.
NTSB investigators said a combination of factors, including worn rail, vertical track deflection, subgrade instability and track misalignment, led to the derailment of Amtrak's westbound Empire Builder on Sept. 25, 2021, killing three passengers and injuring 49 passengers and crew.
In 2022, there were more than 1,000 train derailments in the U.S. There were at least 1,164 train derailments across the country last year, according to data from the Federal Railroad Administration.