Quintinshill Rail Disaster and the road to Gallipoli

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the Quintinshill train crash in which over 200 soldiers of the 1/7th Royal Scots were killed. It remains, to this day, Britain’s worst rail disaster. The soldiers involved were en route to Liverpool, where they were to embark ships headed for Gallipoli. The 1/7th Royal Scots were one of several battalions of the 52nd (Lowland) Division bound for Gallipoli. The 1/7th Scottish Rifles travelled from Falkirk to Liverpool on 22nd May, while the 1/8th Scottish Rifles were already at sea headed for the Dardanelles.

Men of the 1/7th Scottish Rifles parading in front of Grangemouth Public Library, 21st May 1915.

News of the train crash reached the men of the Scottish Rifles as they were embarking on the ships to take them to Gallipoli. Captain Maclean of the 1/7th Scottish Rifles recalls:

“…rumours began to circulate that some of the troops belonging to the division had been involved in a serious railway accident and this news proved only too tragically true. A train containing two companies of the 7th Royal Scots had collided with a local train near Gretna, while within a minute of this catastrophe the north-bound London express had crashed into the wreckage of the troop-train. In a very few minutes fire had got a firm hold on the telescoped carriages, and in spite of every effort to save them, many of the imprisoned victims perished in the flames. The losses of the Royal Scots in this disaster, the worst in the history of British railways, were 3 officers and 207 other ranks, while the survivors were naturally so badly shaken that the War Office deemed it advisable to send them back to their homes”

The 1/7th Scottish Rifles embarked on board the SS Empress of Britain on 22nd May 1915, setting out of the following evening at 7:30pm – their destination, the Gallipoli peninsula.

Officers of the 1/7th Scottish Rifles pose with the crew on board SS Empress of Britain

In little over a month’s time, both the 1/7th and 1/8th Scottish Rifles would take part in the attack at Gully Ravine, which would turn out to be one of the Regiment’s bloodiest actions of the First World War.

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