The fatal train crashes in Scotland’s modern railway history

The Stonehaven derailment ends an unprecedented run of safety on Britain’s railways, and is the first fatal crash in Scotland since 1994.

A still image taken from video footage shows smoke billowing from the scene of a train crash near Stonehaven . Picture: Chris Harvey

Yesterday’s deaths were also the first fatalities on a train in Britain for 13 years, when a Glasgow-bound express derailed in Cumbria.

Rail travel in Scotland is far safer than by road, where there were 168 deaths last year and 2,001 serious injuries.

In 1994, two people died when a train derailed after vandals put concrete blocks on the line in Greenock.

The last previous deaths caused on the railway in Scotland happened at Newton on the edge of Glasgow in 1991.

Four people were killed and 22 were injured when two trains collided.

In 2007, a Virgin Trains service crashed at Grayrigg, near Kendal, killing Margaret Masson, 84, from Glasgow, and injuring 86 others, 28 of them seriously.

Network Rail was fined £4 million after admitting responsibility for safety failures which led to the derailment at 95mph.

Previous fatal crashes in Scotland have included two deaths when two trains collided at Bellgrove in the east end of Glasgow in 1989.

Five years before, 13 people died when an Edinburgh-Glasgow train hit a cow which had strayed on to the main line near Polmont.

In 1979, five were killed at Invergowrie, near Dundee, when two trains collided. The same year, seven died in a two-train collision near Paisley.

In 1973, five died when two trains collided in Glasgow Central

Britain’s worst rail disaster happened at Quintinshill, near Gretna Green, when a troop train and passenger train collided in 1915, killing 230 people.