The Oak Lane Rail Crash 1944 - Newington, Kent, UK. - Railway Disaster Sites on Waymarking.com

On August 16th 1944 the 3:35pm London Victoria to Ramsgate train, carrying about 400 passengers, military as well as civilian, headed off towards it's destination, stopping at Chatham to take on board an unusually large amount of mail causing it, fatefully, to leave 4 minutes late, at 4:46pm. In the air above, the RAF were battling the new terror threat being unleashed from the other side of the Channel, Hitler's V1 flying bombs. No doubt clouded by the fog of time, various versions relate how a Spitfire or Meteor aircraft tipped the flying bomb with its wing in an attempt to down the bomb before it reached it's presumed target, London. Whatever the real version, fact has it that the V1 flew horizontal until it impacted and exploded against the railway bridge in Oak Lane, Newington, near Sittingbourne, Kent, moments before the train arrived at that railway bridge.

Apparently the engine driver, a Charles Barnett, saw the huge plume of smoke ahead of his train and had applied the emergency brakes of the 'Sir Galleron', a King Arthur Class steam locomotive, but to late to prevent the engine and two carriages from careering across the downed bridge and overturning. Both driver Barnett and his fireman David Humphreys, were buried amongst the coal and train wreckage, but somehow Humphreys extracted himself from the wreckage, and after helping his injured driver from the wreckage, went off down the railway line to try and prevent following trains suffering a similar fate. He managed to reach the Newington signal box where he gave details of the disaster. Unknown to Humphreys, the signalman at the Sittingbourne signal box had heard the enormous explosion of the V1 impact and had stopped the 3.35pm train travelling in the opposite direction. That train was sent forward with 2 doctors and 2 RAMC orderlies to assist in the rescue of passengers. To fireman Humphrey's relief, he found that his driver, Charles Barnett had survived. Tragically, 8 others had not, and over 30 passengers were seriously injured.

Today, vehicles pass beneath this ordinary railway bridge, heading more often than not to the new Golf Club to the north of the bridge,without realising the tragedy that occurred here. No plaques, no memorial, just another of the horrors that the V1 brought to our shores during WW2