In May and June 1965 the Salford City Reporter carried a stunning story on how a dog walker saved scores of lives when he averted a potential mega-disaster on the railways.
Local man Leonard Jones was exercising his dog close to the now demolished Weaste rail footbridge when he noticed two youths on the tracks.
To his horror he saw that they had placed five steel plates on the line – each measuring 5 inches by 15 inches and secured in place with a pickaxe handle.
He shouted at them to stop and even managed to get hold of one of them, however they both escaped on bicycles in the direction of Liverpool Street.
Mr Jones quickly dialled 999 and waited for the police to arrive.
Had a steam train gone over the steel plates it would have derailed the carriages, causing certain injury and even death for the 20-30 passengers.
The following evening the two boys, age 12 and 16, were arrested when Mr Jones spotted the pair from a police car trawling the streets.
At first they denied being at the scene the night before, then the younger one said: “Is it about the railway line that you are chasing us?”
He then admitted his guilt and said that the other boy – who it turned out was his brother – was also responsible, adding that their reason for the act was that they wanted to see if the train would derail.
The full extent of the story came out the next day as it was revealed that the train was the 10.20pm boat train from Manchester to Holyhead and would pass through Weaste at 60 miles an hour.
The train was a steam locomotive and compromised six corridor coaches, and two vans.
Investigators told that the heavy metal plates had been stolen from a scrap yard and had been carried a considerable distance to the railway lines.
Mr Theodore Clayton, a railways expert who examined the scene, said that if the train had hit the obstruction it would have been definitely derailed with two probable outcomes.
Firstly either the engine and two or three coaches would have been completely overturned, or if it had managed to remain upright it would have ploughed into the stone buttress of the Weaste footbridge.
The feared magistrate Mr Leslie Walsh remanded the boys in custody for a week whilst further examinations took place.
When they appeared in court the following week they were told that the train derailment bid could carry a life sentence.
Mr Walsh also criticised the boys’ mother for not taking up his advice when he offered legal aid: she claimed she wasn’t in the house when the policeman called.
Two police officers carried one of the steel plates into the court, along with the pickaxe handle to show the court the size and weight of them.
Both boys were sent to the Crown Court in Manchester.
Mr W. H. Jalland, prosecting, told the court that perhaps the nastiest aspect of this incident was that the plates had been secured in place by a pickaxe handle being driven into a railway sleeper.
For the defence Mr Logan Petch said that the accused could never have visualised for one moment the terrible consequences that might have been forthcoming.
Judge Crichton told the boys: “This was a dreadful act, I cannot believe that each of you failed to contemplate that which would have resulted from the derailment of this express train travelling at high speed.
“Many innocent people could have been killed and families made fatherless.”
He sentenced the 16 year old boy to five years detention and the 12 year old boy to three years detention.
Strangely enough, I knew the younger brother, and the evening before I had been playing football in nearby Grey Street when he told me that he had been playing on the railway lines and had put old pennies onto the railway lines to watch them being flattened, which I thought was not only strange but stupidly dangerous.
We have to thank Mr Leonard Jones who managed to avert this possible tragedy by being in the right place at the right time.
If you know Mr Jones or any of his relatives I would love to hear from you. Email tonyflynn@salfordonline.com.
