A serious accident when passenger and freight trains collided, 1881
Local History
In East Fife Record 2 December 1881 page 3
At Tayport a collision occurred on 25th November, 1881. The signalman was arrested and kept in Cupar Prison for a week, and the guard for a few days, although bail to any required amount was forthcoming; however, when the Procurator-Fiscal found that the matter was receiving great attention in the engineering papers, and that a question was about to be asked in the House of Commons, he granted bail. At the trial it came out that the signalman was over sixty years of age, that he had been in the service and borne an excellent character for more than thirty years, and that he was kept on duty daily for from 15^ to 16 hours ; at the end of one of these long days he made a mistake and caused a fatal collision.
Major Marindin stated in his report that “it is hardly too much to say that it is a scandal that such an amount of work as is implied by these hours should be exacted from any man upon whose vigilance depends the safety of the public.’*
On 25 November 1881 there was a serious accident at Tayport when passenger and freight trains collided leading to six deaths. This was due to an error by the signalman, Thomas Dippie who was tried for culpable homicide, but the jury rapidly found him not guilty, probably due to the excessive hours he had been forced to work. The Tayport Line. Part 3. Alistair E. Nisbet. 468-75.