TODAY we are going back to 1961 – a year where two train disasters rocked south Essex.

Both crashes occurred near Pitsea Railway Station and both, tragically, claimed fatalities and left scores of others injured.

The first accident occurred on Tuesday April 18, 1961, and involved the 12.25pm Fenchurch Street to Shoeburyness service. The steam engine was pulling eleven carriages and carrying around 150 passengers when it derailed as it approached Pitsea Station.

Travelling at around 20mph at the time, it toppled on its side and came to a rest on a steep wooded embankment.

The Southend Standard newspaper reported how the initial scene was one of “chaos” and described how “death had come to peaceful and sun-soaked Pitsea”.

Reporters painted a picture of carnage: “Personal belongings of the passengers were thrown from the coaches, packets of tea were scattered down the track, a briefcase hung from the door handle of a wrecked compartment, a rolled umbrella was left embedded in the bushes.

“In the wreckage of the first coach playing cards were scattered like leaves in the wind - a grim reminder of a quiet game that had been savagely interrupted by tragedy.”

Police, firemen, civil defence workers, railwaymen and locals living nearby were quick to the scene and worked to free passengers trapped in the wreckage.

Many of the passengers who managed to clamber out of the carriages were left with “badly gashed limbs” while others spoke of their miraculous escape.

Engine driver Mr Sydney Fisher of West Road, Shoebury, who had been travelling as a passenger on the train while on his way home from work, died instantly. He was 61. Fellow passenger Robert Salmons of Barking died a short time later while undergoing emergency surgery in hospital. He was 59. More than 40 others were left with injuries. The most seriously affected, nearly all of whom had been travelling in the first three coaches, were relayed to Southend, Billericay and Orsett Hospitals for treatment.

One of the first people on the scene was Mr Alan Aldis of Basildon who spent an hour tending to passengers. He said: “When I first arrived they were screaming and crying for help, it was a terrible sight.”

One passenger, Philip Phillips, of York Road, Southend, was left with badly lacerated legs. He told a reporter: “There was a noise like thunder and the compartment just seemed to collapse around me. I shouted for help and some people pulled me out. How I got out alive, I just don’t know.”

Another passenger, 17-year-old Gillian Simmons, of Hadleigh, said she had felt the carriage shaking violently. She told how a man sitting opposite her grabbed her and an elderly lady sitting next to her and threw them on the ground to protect them.

The tragedy made the headlines across the country and news crews and reporters rushed to the scene.

A later investigation into the disaster found the cause was down to human error. The line at the time of the incident was being worked as single only part way between Laindon and Pitsea due to ongoing electrification engineering work.

However confusion involving the ‘catch points’, which should guide railway carriages and trucks from a dangerous route onto a separate, safer track, resulted in the train being derailed, as the report laid out: “An experienced and properly equipped man had been appointed to close and secure the catch point and to hand signal trains over it; in a moment of aberration he clipped the switches in the position for derailing the train and, failing to check thereafter that he had clipped them correctly, he hand-signalled the train into derailment.”

Just over three months later, on Sunday July 30, mayhem struck again when another train crash occurred.

It involved the 10.05 from Tilbury to Thorpe Bay service.

The headline in the Southend Standard was “Death Again on Railway Line at Pitsea” after a lorry driver collided with a stream train on the Marsh Road level crossing at Pitsea.

It resulted in the death of the lorry driver and seriously injured an elderly female pedestrian.

Alfred Pound, 39, of Harold Wood had been at the wheel of the seven-tonne lorry.

Employed by building contractors Thomas Bates & Son, he was on his way to Pitsea tip to deliver some soil.

The train was reducing speed to stop at Pitsea station, and was travelling at about 30 mph as it reached the crossing.

The two vehicles collided and the lorry was spun round and its body crushed the sides of the first two coaches as the train ran past.

Miraculously the coaches were not derailed and fortunately there were no passengers in the first two coaches - though the rest of the train was packed with people, many of whom were on their way to Southend for a day at the seaside.

Pitsea Stationmaster RW Barrett was in front of his house at Pitsea station when he heard the noise of the collision. He immediately ran to the crossing to find out what had happened. He made sure that the emergency services had been called and told the signalman to protect the lines.

Mr Barrett said: “The train was loaded with people going to the seaside, but as it happened there was no one in the first two coaches. If there had had been then the consequences would have almost certainly been tragic.”

Because it was Sunday the crossing was unmanned at the time. A report later determined the train driver was not at fault as his view of the crossing was impaired by stationary wagons.