Description
During the night of 15 August a train of 36 loaded vans and empty mineral wagons from Lostock Hall to Healey Mills headed by a Type 4 disel D398 collided with the 'Copy Pit' banker*, an 8F 2-8-0 steam loco, at about 60-70 mph. The driver of the diesel was killed and wreckage was strewn over a mile with some wagons rolling down the embankment including into houses in Cornholme. (Information thanks to 'Railway Memories No. 11, Halifax and the Calder Valley' published by Bellcode Books.)
* Banking was the use on a steep gradient of a powerful loco at the rear of a heavy train to help ‘push it up’ and also to stop any wagons that broke away from rolling back down hill, not unknown in the Upper Calder Valley.