I BELIEVE I can help Mr Philpot with his research into the 1948 train accident.

In April 1948 my father WE (Bill) Dickenson, was chairman of the local authority, which at the time was Winsford Urban District Council, and in that capacity he was at the centre of organising the local response. I was 16-years-old and well remember the events immediately following the accident.

We should remember that the country was still living very much in the aftermath of the Second World War, that manual signalling was in operation on the railways and all passenger rolling stock was wooden.

The train in which most of the fatalities occurred was the night Glasgow to London Express and the circumstances leading up to the accident were established at the inquiry and are well-documented.

A Winsford soldier, going home on leave, brought the train to a halt at Winsford by pulling the communication cord. When this happened in 1948, the guard was required to walk back up the line, fixing detonators to the track. He did not start to do this until it was too late. The local signalman assumed the train had passed his box and allowed the mail train into the section. The tragic consequences are history.

Those are the bare facts but it is the human stories that stay in one's mind for ever.

Winsford was a poor town of just over 12,000 inhabitants living in a country impoverished through war, with wartime rationing unabated.

The old Over Mills building in John Street, which was a requisitioned warehouse, was speedily set up as a mortuary. All the dead, as well as all the personal effects that were scattered over the railway line were taken there. There was not a hint of any looting. The corpses were laid out with reverence and decorum by a small team of volunteers who also escorted and comforted the grieving relatives who came to Winsford during the following days. My uncle S J (Syd) Dickenson, had a major role in this facet of the operation and I recall well the discussions he had with my father.

April 17, 1948 was a Sunday and Winsford United had a home fixture that day. In those days the regular "gate" numbered hundreds and my father made an announcement over the public address system before the game started.

He referred to the fact that many of the dead were Scottish, that relatives would be coming to Winsford over the next few days, to identify their loved ones and to claim their possessions, and Winsford had no hotels and very little lodging accommodation of any kind.

He appealed to the people of Winsford to open their doors to the visitors with offers of a bed, a meal or even just a cup of tea and comfort. (My mother kept the notes of his appeal for many years.)

By 6pm he had received more than 600 offers, from a town which could not have boasted many more houses than 2,000 and at a time when for many of the townspeople, keeping body and soul together for oneself and one's family was a struggle.

Many friendships were forged at that time, in the midst of such a tragedy. My father himself continued to correspond with many of the people who came to Winsford, right up to his death eight years later, and my mother continued the correspondence for years afterwards.

A particularly poignant piece of this correspondence was with a German lady.

A party of German Navy prisoners of war was being repatriated on the express and some of these were among those killed. Even though the war was still fresh in people's minds the German dead were dealt with as sensitively as the British and I can recall Winsford people standing in silence and removing their hats as, later, the Naval coffins passed by, along the old High Street back up to the railway on their way to their loved ones in Germany.

Indeed, the mother of one of these young German seamen never forgot the respect shown to her son and continued to correspond with my mother until a few years ago when she too died.

In many ways, mid-April 1948 can be counted Winsford's finest hour, albeit in circumstances which everyone would have wished had never happened, and many times, in many parts of the world, have I had the privilege of recounting with pride the manner in which a small, poor town opened not only its doors but its hearts to complete strangers in time of their tragic need. The circumstances of the time are unlikely to be repeated but rarely can any like community have poured out so much compassion in peacetime.

Ian Dickenson

New England Homes

Wharton House

Wharton Road

Winsford

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