Thinking Sideways: Moorgate Tube Crash

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the promo code sideways at checkout. That's sideways and save yourself five bucks when you pick up corded or wireless sleep phones at sleep phones dot com. Thinking Sideways broke the I don't know stories of things we simply don't know the answer to get there. And welcome again to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I am Steve, as always joined by Devon Joe, and as usual we've got another

mystery for you. This week we're gonna be talking about the Morgate tube crash, which was suggested to us by Richard. Thanks Richard, yes, so thank you, Richard. I gotta be honest with you when you first put up, you know, on our little spreadsheet that you were going to do this with like, boy, that's a dumb, super boring dumb. Actually turns out super interesting, way more interesting than originally anticipating. So good job, good job. More controversial too than you

would think. Absolutely so. For folks who don't know, let's give a little bit of a primer here, as we always like to do. The In nineteen seventy five the Morgate Tube grash happened, which was the crash of a passenger train in the London underground and that was not having it for a landing pilot lost control, not that at all like that. No, it's a train, not a plane. Wrong, wrong, wrong aim. For those of you not familiar with the

London Underground a k a. The Tube. It's London's rapid transit system and their rapid transit train system, which is both above and blowground. It's commuter light rail correct, much like the New York subways. The subway. People are familiar with the subway in America, we probably don't need to spell it out in two graphic. Although the Tube is much older. It's started in it's almost as old as

Boston system. I'm kidding. And I was like, wait a second, because you know, London started in nineteen o four, although or not London but New York. Although I remember it was weird at first the London train or the New York train wasn't actually underground, it was just below grade. Partially. It was the weirdest train system in the world. But that's a completely different conversation. Actually, New York has got like this, this phantom subway tunnel. This guy actually got

a train and everything that's been sealed off for years. Yeah, I heard about that to do an episode on it. Yeah, this sounds familiar. Yeah, it's not bringing a bell at the moment. Yeah. So the accident that we're talking about in it takes place on the Highbury branch, which from what I can tell from the maps of the time, was a short north south line that ran between two larger lines, and it actually connects like three or maybe four lines. Well, it has stations, so that's what you need.

That's the thing about the tube is when you read that map. I looked at it realized there's five stops, but two of those stops are on different partitions portions of the same line, and then one's on the north. But long story short, it was considered to be part of the North Line. It's no longer in service. Yeah, it was. I'm not surprised that it's not in service because it was for passenger trains for the two because it was such a teeny tiny little line. Well, it's

not very efficient if you connect. If you get those lines more directly, that means to train rides instead of three train rides for a lot of people. I can see where a lot of people would favor that. I totally have the same thought. I saw where the benefit for the commuter was, but not for the operator of the rail line. Just for history sake, I looked it up. The Boston area was eighteen thirty ishes when their railroad, their underground railroad started right, yeah? Uh? Is that the

one for slaves or the one for just commuters? Sorry? Okay, to begin at the beginning of the story. On the day that things happened, the morning of February, the train left from Drayton Park, which was the northernmost stop on that line, and it left that stop to make its third loop of the day that particular train set and it left supposedly thirty seconds late. I see it always listed as having left at either eight thirty eight or

eight thirty nine am. I'm not positive which, but I'm not going to split the thirty seconds to to worry about it. At eight forty six, the train was approaching its final destination, which was Morgate, which was the final stops super stubby Yeah, and it includes stops yeah stops yeah yeah, got it? Okay, yeah, super stubby line. So it's approaching its final destination, and the train should have been reducing its speed to come into the station, to

come into that stop. At at most it should have been traveling at fifteen miles per hour it translates to four kilometers per hour, but instead it was going and estimated thirty to forty miles per hour, which translates to forty eight to sixty four kilometers an hour, so it was full more than double. It's a it's maximum allowable speed. I wonder what people on the platform we're doing. I mean, I know that I'd be running for the exit, but

I wonder if people just stood there. And it sounds like a bunch of people stood there and watched it because it happened so fast, just happened too quickly to have much time to react. And so what happens is that the stop the tunnel for the train doesn't end at the end of the platform. It continued on another sixty six feet, which is twenty so there's twenty more of tunnel. And that tunnel had things in it that were meant to stop a runaway train. Well, yeah, that's

it wasn't meant for something this fast. But it had what's called the sand drag, and then it also had a hydraulic buffer. So sand drag literally is just sand piled on the rails, in this instance two feet deep, and then the ram. It's basically you've seen this at the end of on TV, probably the end of the line. There's a block or a metal frame with a ram or hydraulic arm that is meant to absorb the speed of the train horizontally to stop it without making a

major crash. Well, two problems, as we already identified. First off, the train is going way too fast and it blew through the drag. And the second problem was that the hydrafl buffer wasn't working. It was actually broken, So the only thing that probably helped slow the train down was

colliding with the thing and ripping it out of the ground. Yeah. Yeah, they probably should have stepped with the other kind of hydraulic popper, which is just all those fifty five yell and dromes filled with water, like having the freeways here in the States, right, Yeah, that can't break down too easy. Yeah, no, oh no, it so so it was bad. I mean really, it tore through there, and obviously it hit the end of the tunnel because the tunnel did end after that

hydraulic ram. To make things worse though, is that if you think about the tube, it's in a tunnel, and that tunnel is designed to only be a little bit wider all the way around than the trains themselves, which if I remember right, I think the tunnel is supposed to be about ten feet in diameter, and I which

is roughly three ms. It's a little less than three meters. Well, the problem was this particular piece of line was designed to actually haul cargo cars, so it had they had to be bigger, so it was actually thirteen feet wide

and sixteen feet tall. That's not great. So the danger in that is that this train that comes blowing through and should have just hit the end of the tunnel and compressed entirely horizontally, is now allowed to jump off of the tracks, hit the ceiling, hit the walls, ping pong all around, and bend in a whole bunch of places and therefore collapse not only horizontally, but bend vertically. And it did. The lead car was bent in three or in two places, so it was a total of

three or something. Yeah, it was more of you almost, Yeah, it was. It was really crazy the way the thing just I mean it, it did not was not designed to take that kind of impact, and it showed based on that tunnel. Although actually having a slightly wider tunnel was beneficial because it allowed us like rescue workers to squeeze between the train and the tunnel and forward that was only benefit that helped a little bit, a little bit.

I mean, standard tube widths are they're you know, small, right, so it's a it's a tight fit, but they are designed to be able to vacate people through them. I mean, most of them are. I don't know about the London Underground, I haven't been in that one in a long time, but at least the ones like in Chicago and New York, like you have to have a way for passengers to exit the train and evacuate on either side, so there's you know, it's not wide, but it's a couple of feet.

But in this case, you know when when when the trains hit, they sort of like crump. So that's where the problem. If it was a properly sized tube that would have it would have been a ten point two. It would have sealed a shut probably yeah yeah, well yeah,

close to it anyway, yeah yeah yeah. If you look at this particular train, and we'll talk about this later, is part of what's known as the Stock and nineteen and most of the tube trains, they have a curved domey rough to them, but then at some point the sides of the car end up just running vertically up and down, because you've gotta have that flat edge, and that's the space that would allow people to somewhat make their way through, though not easily. They could get their

way through. As to what you're referring to, So, as I always say, not surprisingly, a massive emergency crew was assembled, a massive rescue operation. What I want to know isn't you probably don't know this, but how big a boom and how far away wasn't heard? I do not know that, to be honest with you. It probably did, but I don't know how far it would have traveled, actually, because if you think about it, it's a lot of brick

and concrete. But it's also in a tunnel system that has other trains making their own noise, and as you know, certain noises will help cancel each other out. So I don't know, I have no idea. But still, boom, Yeah it was. It was a hell of a boom. But rescue workers they show up, they find that the station is dark, it's it's smokey and dusty, and they had

to work to get the people out. Now, what happens here is that the train goes into that an extra bit of tunnel, but the last three cars are still at the platform, so the people in those cars they can open the doors and they can get out, lucky them. But for everybody in the front three cars, it wasn't as good. And the rescue workers had to go down that side of the tunnel on the left and the right as you were talking about Devon, and they literally had to cut the cars open because the doors were

just completely few shut in the compression process. I'm assuming that they were using saws and not torches when they were cutting these people out, but I don't know that for sure. They might have the temperature, and there a lot they did because the temperature the fire brigade, I can't think of who it was that that one of

the responders. I read a whole bunch of stuff on their site, but they talked about, you know, they show up in full fire garb, and then they're quickly stripping down to basically just T shirts and their pants if they can. Because the temperatures rose quite quickly to nine to a hundred and twenty degrees fahrenheit or converting that, that's thirty two degrees celsius. So it's freaking hot. Because I just sort of engineers mind, I was sort of

thinking about the logistics of that situation. I'm thinking that now I bet they have like some gigantic fans that they can break. Wouldn't be for this and something that's magnitude. They're probably probably about some gigantic fans to make sure this doesn't happen again. Though, Oh my god, it must have been uncomfortable down there. This has the heat. I mean, just imagine breathing all that smoke and dust and you know, dead bodies and yeah, no, I can't imagine that it

was good. Now, as we said, you know, they got to cut these cars open because they've compressed in. The doors are all squished shut and sealed. To give you a little bit of context, because I've said this a couple of times, everything was compressed shut. For context, each of the car ours that went into that tunnel was they were fifty two ft long. That tunnel was sixty

six ft long. There was two and a half cars crammed into that sixty six ft of tunnel, which means take two popkins and just empty popkins and squeeze them down to the length of one. And I don't give you a really good idea of how much damage that does. It's it's pretty phenomenal. Indeed, luckily I wasn't around. Not surprisingly, not everybody survived the accident. There were a total of

three hundred people on the train. Of those three hundred, forty two people died on the scene, and I see conflicting accounts that it's either one or two people died after the fact from the injuries that they sustained. A total of seventy four additional people were treated four injuries that they got, So that's that's over a hundred, still over a third of the passenger. But somehow like hundred and a hundred eighty people walked away with like minor injury.

So for a crash of this magnitude, that's pretty incredible. The people in the first two cars were the majority of the death. It's so the people in the back back couple of cars. They got tossed around, but they were in almost no damage of dying, and they fell the wrong way. Crazy. I wonder if there's a major trend after that for people to ride in the back I you know, I don't know, that's a that's a good question. I have no idea. Would in the first I think it's in the first eighteen hours all of

the injured passengers got off the train. The final body wasn't removed from the train though, for four days total. But do we know how long it took, on average for them to remove the rest of the dead bodies. We don't. We don't know how long it took to remove those those other dead bodies, which I know where you're going for labor stuff. We don't. We don't know how thought it was like they got almost everybody out

in the first twenty four hours too. I believe it was all of the people who were injured and a majority of the casualties. But I have a feeling the people that were in the very first car were the hardest to get because of the way it compressed and bent. Yeah, well it took him four days to get Yeah. They The last body that they get out is the driver of the train, the motor min as they're referred to, and the particularly driver. His name was Leslie newsoen He

and he was a fifty six year old guy. He'd been working for the two for about six years at that point. He six or seven years though for the first until the last year of his life. He'd been working as a guard, because you gotta remember, somebody's got to walk through and help with the doors and keep an eye on the passengers so no bad stuff happens. And that's what the guard is for, and that's what

he did. But we do presume that the guard is at least, you know, peripherally trained in do not operation. That is not the case, not even at all. RED guards is supposed to be trained. And how the trains function. Well, I understood that they were training in the basic functions, but they had to actually go through training to drive a train. They might be able to operate. That's why I said it's peripherally educated. Okay, yeah, but they understand

things like especially how the brake systems were. You wouldn't need to know how like all that stuff. Okay, I guess I was taking that into larger context the Okay, now I got you vaguely understand how the thing works. Yes, yes, so that if an emergency happened, they could take over, like pull the brake handle. Yeah. And actually, I gotta tell you, I have seen video of people driving the trains, and actually I think I could do it. It's not a complex machine to operate, and I will say that.

I was about to say, I don't believe it's an easy machine to operate, but I don't believe it's complex. And well I know that, I know that. Right now, there's there's some too operated that's listening to this and he's fuming, and I just want to say, dude, i'd realize your job was harder than it looks. But set us an email. Anyway, Yeah, where were we Well, what we were gonna say is we were talking about Leslie Newsoon did go les I don't know that, to be honest.

I thought I've seen it online, people calling him last but I was just gonna use his last name to be safe, right, let's just go Okay. So, by all accounts, Newsome was a good driver, and he took his job seriously. Like I said, he'd only been driving trains for the past year, and he according to his his wife and children, he wasn't a drinker and when he had a drink drink, which was very rare, it was only on holidays and

he might have one or two brown ales. He only called out of work for a total of two days in the fire. The six or seven years he worked for the tube, So that's a good record. And his coworkers said that he didn't really have many friends, but generally he was a very cautious driver. He was known to the typical process, and this is a very general statement, so please understand that was there was a point where you should start to begin breaking to get to a

minimum speed and then stop at the platform. He was known for just shutting off the engines before that minimum distance and letting the train coast almost entirely, and so he barely had to use the brakes at all. So it seems like a nice smooth ride, yes, which I've been on some trains that weren't so so I appreciate and that might that might have been him. I mean, I we'll talk about this a little later. But they

were also maintenance issues on the train. He might have been one of these guys that didn't want to put any stress on this brake because he thought, well, I might need those something. That is something he was known for keeping a logbook of maintenance issues, and so that is one thing that was found on in his belongings.

Trains had some maintenance issues. So overall, though the description that we just gave of Nussen does not jive with what the official investigation and found and decided because they say that the entire incident was due to operator error. Um. When you look at the you guys looked through the the accident report, it's quite long, although the map at

the end was really really useful. But according to the witnesses who were at the station, Newson was standing up and staring straight ahead as the train passed through the station with his hand in the full throttle position. Are you gonna at some point, I presume we'll talk about how these trains are operated, how somebody could say it was in the full throttle, probably in much more detail than some people really want, because that's the way I

am with these mechanical bits and pieces. Okay, but we'll pause on that until you get there, okay, because well we'll hold off. This is still kind of the general stuff. Uh So, like I said this, the witnesses said that they saw him going through the station with his hands

in the full throttle position. Ordering to the official investigation, they they felt like this witness statement was true because they say that when his body was removed from the train, it appeared that his hands prior to the impact must

have been in that position. And they also X rayed his arms in his hands because, according to the official investigation, what they expected to see was that his bones would have been broken in a recognizable manner of a person realizing they're going to run into something doing that defensive gesture where you put you cross your arms and put them in front of your head. We've all seen this

on TV and movies. That's what they expected. And because the breaks in his arms and hands weren't consistent with that position, they said, yeah, I know, his hands must have been on the controls. They can't say where the controls were, but they say his hands had to have been on the actual control that well even I mean, but even if they were, they can't say, oh, he was frantically trying to break or he was accelerating full throttle. All they can say is they were probably in the

same area where the controls were. Yep, that's absolutely right. And and to be honest, the um so the statement that of his hands where his hands were is a bit dodgy to me because drivers typically would operate the train, most of them would operate the train without the cab light on, so it didn't create glare and stuff like that so they can see a head well when coming into the station. The inquest did a bunch of tests and they had drivers with light onto, the light off,

with a height off. You can see the general silhouette of the person, but you can't actually discern what position their hands are in. In other words, full power off, pulling the brake, not pulling the brake. You can just kind of generally see their silhouette. So I would see

it because I'd be running away. Well. Witness reports are often like really hold like having not in the not too long ago future, tried to give a witness testimony, as you know whatever from something that I thought I saw very clearly, and then realizing I actually have no idea if what I'm saying is accurate or not, like it's I mean, and that is the reason why I am inclined to disregard the statement of the witness named

I A. But I kid you not that is his name. Yes, I'm pretty sure it's pronounced in this country, but an unfortunate name. So this was a horrible, horrible incident. I mean, like we said, a lot of people lost their lives, a lot of injuries, but The good things that came

out of it were two. The first of which is that the speed limits for trains that were coming to the the not the the actual end of the line dead ends was reduced from fifteen to ten miles per hour to help ensure that somebody couldn't be asleep at the wheel and driving fifteen and drive all the way through.

The Other thing that came through is that in night the Morgate Protection System was introduced, which it was an automated system that if after a certain point a train wasn't below a certain speed, it automatically turned on the brakes. So truly automated the I shouldn't say truly, but to a large extent, automated the brakes so that if somebody's not paying attention and they're flying through there, the train

is gonna stop. Because that's the problem with this incident is that, according to everybody, the train never hit its brakes. It just flew through full throttle. Here's my favorite part about this. Wasn't it the train crash that happened in America like two years ago where suddenly they were like, oh, you know what we should have on our commuter rail? Yes, safety things yeah, you should make some safety stuff because

be safe and stuff. Yeah, that would help, Yeah, you know thirty years after if nothing else, you know, maybe like like a big guy to stand be handed driver and sort of step in when things go south and say excuse me, just no, not excuse me, just knocking out of the way and grab the controls. Um. I know we're close to theories here, but just quickly, tube drivers do they sit or stand? Stand? Stand in the stock?

I understood that they stood. I did not ever see a seat in any of the photos of the driver's section of the train, which suddenly the names escaped me cab, cab, thank you. I'll work with that. So, yes, there is not a seat that I just wanted to clarify any other questions before we know, well, before we get into theories, let's take a really quick break. Hi there, Joe here

from Thinking Sideways the podcast, Well, it finally happened. There's another podcast out there, and finally somebody cut into a great idea and they're doing it too. Uh. And so if you do have room in your life for a second podcast, do I want to give this one a look? Or I guess I'll listen. It's called The First Day Back, and it's kind of intriguing sounding. The concept is how does a person return from an event that changes them? Uh? The news story for this new season apparently it's spent it.

This is the second season. It's about a woman who's just getting out of prison. She was in prison because she accidentally shut and killed her husband. And here's the kicker, she has no memory of it, and the show explains what happened that night and also just everything that comes after, like what's it like to on your first day out of prison? How do you readjust how do you find a job? Can you reconnect with your family? And all?

That's the easy part, of course. The hard part is figuring out how to live with the guilt of what she did and try to find some forgiveness herself. So that's what it's about. The bottom line is how do you come back from the worst thing you've ever done, especially when you don't even remember doing it. The show is called First Day Back. It's on Stitcher and well wherever else you'd listen to podcasts. Okay, and we're back And I'm a little upset with you, Joe, because where's

my sandwich? I've had that thing in the fridge for a while now, and I've slowly been working my way through, and i want to know where my footlong sandwich is at here. Here's all you gotta do is follow your nose. Okay, Well, let's get onto theories. Theory number one, which shouldn't be any surprise to anybody, because this is always there in an accident situation, he'll have to start a new life. He faked his own death. No, actually, that's wrong kind

of mystery, wrong kind of mystery. No, this is he was drunk, because drunk is always it. People say, well, he had to have and drunk to have driven the train into the end of the tunnel and and not

have slowed, not applied the brakes. And one of the things that is always referred to, and you see this in the official inquest, is that when they tested his blood, they found that he had eighty milligrams per one milli leaders of alcohol in his blood, which by my math comes out to point oh eight b a C meaning legally drunk in this country, in the US, at our state high in different places more like four. But I

could be wrong about that. Well, and there's some things to take into consideration here, the first of which is that the doctor, and it's referred to strangely in a lot of the reporting, but the doctor who took the samples and wrote the report said that she took samples from eight other bodies that were in the same conditions as Nuisance, and that his blood alcohol content was double any of the other bodies on and I'm assuming they were bodies from that actual accident scene. You know, we've

talked about this before, but we'll do it again. Is that the human body, when it expires, is capable of creating alcohol, or I should probably correct that it's the bacteria that are feeding upon the human body that make

alcohol as a byproduct. And the warmer it is, the faster they work and the faster they grow and eat, and therefore about alcohol not alcohol, no, no, but think about the conditions we described, which is a tunnel that is between ninety two a hundred and twenty degree it did it got it gets really hot in there, so depending on so there's there's some things that we don't we don't we don't get the answers to which is we know that his body was in there for four days,

but we don't know how long the other bodies that were sampled, we're actually in the tunnel before they were moved, and I'm presuming sent to a morgue where they were then put into a cooler, which would have stopped a little bacteria from continuing to generate alcohol. Yeah, he was definitely the last out. Yea saying goes first in last out. Yeah, that is the old saying. So let's just let's run with the theory. Though. Yeah, there are other issues here though,

I mean there are there are. So if we run with the theory and we think about this, let's let's think about, well, when could he have had his drinks when he could have could have been drinking? Well, there's before or on the job. Those are the two simple

answers there. If we think about on the job. The morning of the accident, sometime between six ten and six twenty four, which was the start of the shift, Newson had tea with some of the other drivers, and one of whom asked if he could borrow some milk, and he allowed him to, and that driver said the milk didn't taste of alcohol, so obviously he wasn't spiking his tea.

As he was driving through the day. That to me means that he must have consumed it, probably before he would have gotten to work, because drinking on the job is really obvious because it's a semi open cab situation. I'll take a little issue with that and say that, you know, to go cups are a thing he could have you been having a bunch of alcohol in like a styrofied flask. No, it's like a styrofoam cup that looks like coffee or something like that. Those were Those

were very popular in those days. It is. But the thing is is that I can't imagine nobody that nobody that he interacted with said that he a smelled of booze or be acted weird. So it seems a little weird that he would have done it beforehand. No, I'm just I'm saying I'm taking issue with drinking on the job. But the other thing I was going to say is that the guard on the train interacted with Nussen through the two hour or hour prior to the accident and

never saw anything. And it's not like the driver can hold his cup least driving the train. That's true. Most like to see a cup holder mostly just playing Devil's after training but I will also mention that maybe the testimony of that guard is not the most sounds. He was an eighteen year old kid, and he wasn't really paying attention. He's actually quite scolded in the report for lack of diligence in his duties. Well, and he should have.

It should have been like mostly at the back of the train anyway, so there would have been plenty of time it would have been around the driver. But but I also agree he probably wasn't drinking before. I mean, the co workers. If they went so far to say, well, the milk wasn't alcohol, they probably would have gone so far to also say, also, he wasn't drunk when we were hanging out with him, at least not drunk enough to cratch a train. Should have been stumbling at six

in the morning. To have been that unaware he had to, he would have had been super stumbly, you know, belligerently drunk, and he did not appear to be that way though his family they did have booze in the house. There was a reporter that went over and she looked, he was like, where did you keep the drink cabinet? And they looked and sure, if there's Bacardi because everybody says, well, he must have been drinking something that didn't have a smell.

And I gotta tell you that only vodka drinkers and sometimes gin drinkers are the ones who believe that you can't smell that stuff. But yeah, and they're wrong, they're wrong. Everybody else can smell that stuff. So and also adults have Bacardi in the house, like, calm down. Yeah, I saw that report and it was like she admitted that it might be down a little bit in the level, but she didn't know. She didn't know. And the thing about it is is this is like how many months

or years, nine months after the fact. Yeah, So I mean, I gotta tell you it would have been in my house that would have been like not down a little bit. Yeah, it would have been gone replaced. But I was gonna say, I'm going to be in big trouble if I ever like getting a crash and they're like, well, let's go see your alcohol continet. You have alcohol in your house,

Oh well you must have been drunk. Like I'm I'm out of luck at that point that if that's how we're doing this now now to give a little bit of credence to the he should have been drunk or he was drunk theory. If indeed his b a c was double the other people on the train, let's just say the bacteria created point oh four blood alcohol content. That means that he had to have at the time of the accident had point oh four already in his system. So he may not have truly been belligerently blasted drunk.

But still point oh four, that's that's pretty drunk, and you and it should have been smells, behavioral issues, and none of that really comes up. So but also, like, did he I mean, you know, so he did an entire run of a train. He'd been doing runs all morning, right, was he having a hard time hitting the stops at all the other places? I mean, it's not as though, especially in the less than ten minutes it takes to

do the run. We're not saying like, oh, and you know it was weird because he was lurching into every single stop he was missing he stops, those were pretty hard stops to hit as well, and he made those all fine. So what happened in the what two minutes between the last stop and the final stuff? I mean, I don't know, but I mean it had to have been, but it had to have been at the beginning of there. I mean, I've been I've been over the legal limit,

at least I think so. I've never actually blown a breathalyzer before, but I'm sure I've been over the leg I'm pretty sure you have to. And I have never crashed the train. Yeah, So anecdotally, we're proving this theory bad. This is a poor theory and and it was dismissed by the official inquiry, though there are people who still feel that it's correct. But we'll leave that theory behind

and we'll move to the next one. I hate this one, I know you do, and I'm not I'm not very keen on it though it's rather popular, which is that Nussen was decided to commit suicide and just happened to take forty three other poor souls along with him. He decided to to you know, it was death by train. He decided that was his method to go. There are a lot of issues with this. There are the first of which is that people say, well, he he obviously knew what he was doing, and he did it, did

it intentionally. That's why he was seen standing upright in the cab when he came through the station, and they say, you know, the fact that he didn't cover his his head with his arms shows that he was also doing it willfully and it wasn't um, you know, it wasn't it oh crap moment He's like, I'm doing, I'm doing.

He was just hanging on again, doing it intentionally. But as with all suicide theories, this doesn't made up with anybody who knows him, because as we've seen this in a lot of stories, his family, his co workers, they all say that he didn't have any signs of depression, he didn't show any signs of being suicidal, nothing like that was present. Though we have talked about the fact that there can be that spur of the moment, hidden hidden feelings people don't want to admit or don't see.

But the thing that I have a problem with the whole suicide theory is that the day before Newson had sent his wife to the bank to get three hundred pound so that he could then go buy a car for his daughter, and he had that money on him, which to me indicates he's planning to go from work to buy the car, to take the car home, which in my estimation would not be the actions of a

man who was planning to take his own life. Actually, it occurs to me he has a daughter who was of the age that he was buying a car for, so that could account for why the liquor was maybe a little lower and originally anticipated. I mean, you know there were teenage kids in the house. But no, I

mean I agree, it's it's that same thing. What was the case we talked about recently with the guy who apparently stabbed himself three times as as yeah, I mean he and again we had that issue where he apparently made himself a meal and and stabbed himself again. It's it's like, wait that that there's there's a level of drunk and get intentional that I don't think so I I will agree. I don't know about you, Joe, but I personally am willing very easily to discount suicide. Uh yeah,

I don't really buy it either. I could I could picture murder. Actually. Actually, the one thing that sort of turns in my head, and this one is like you've

seen this in the movies or TV or whatever. We're there's a guy and for some reason, because some some international cabal of the bio terrorists have got the goods on him, and they he doesn't the crash the train, or they'll kill his family or something, and so I yeah, so I sort of I sort of went with that theory just for fun, you know, of course, you know we've seen in the movies, right, Well, if it happens in the movies, it happens in real life. Yeah, so

there's that. So that would be suicide but not really voluntary. Involuntary, so technically murdered, but I don't see any real evidence of that. It's a nice one, juicy. Yeah, yeah, there yours not the real theory. Um, so let's go to our next next theory. He had a medical condition which was the cause of the entire accident. The inquisition, they looked into a lot of things to try and figure out if indeed something had happened. You know, they checked his heart to see if maybe he had suffered a

heart attack. They did tests which I'm not exactly clear on, but they were trying to figure out if he had had a seizure of some kind that would have locked up his muscles so that he couldn't release the controls of the train. Those are hard to nothing was found from it, well, yeah, especially because I mean I I presume that his body took a fair amount of damage in the crash, so it would be hard to massive trauma to the head massive He would be really hard

to kind of diagnose any of those things. After the field, I think the just about everything would have been kind of exploded. They did examine his body to see if he had been electrocuted, because the trains, they're electric trains, and there was the possibility that a current could have for some reason gone through the metal controls that he was holding, would have gone through his body and then through his feet back into the metal decking. That would

have been the current. Him standing in the same spot and keeping his grip, Yeah, because he's being being shocked and therefore all of his muscles are contracted and he cannot physically let go. That probably would have left some marks, though there were none, so definitely couldn't have been that. So I don't believe that that was it. UM. I

have a couple of medical theories. Okay, Yeah, One thing is, you know, fifty three is not that old, but um early signs of dementia can't account for UM kind of black out locked in syndrome. I kind of looked into that and it seems like there should have been a

lot more symptoms. Well, it's hard. Early signs of dementias particularly are really hard because there are things like you are a little more forgetful than you usually are, or you have blackouts or you know, blah blah blah, and these are all things that you have to self report,

and especially you know British stiff upper lip. You know, at fifty six, it's likely if it was just starting to happen, that he would have not even mentioned it, or even his wife would have said, it's funny you you keep leaving your keys all around, you know, and you keep asking me where they are, and they're sitting right there. What's you know, what's going on? Oh, it's

you know, just getting older. It's it's normal aging. And I mean that's one thing that could account for it, because you you can suffer these like really just blackouts basically where your brain just stops functioning but your body is still functioning. I So my my one problem with that, well, it's it's a very popular reason today. It's it's it's

the Darling diagnosis. It's it's the diagnosis. Well, no, just just for things today, for in our current i'd say last decade, it's like, oh, well, I bet you was early onset dimension dimension. I feel like I see that a lot in stories more than I used to. I think they're just getting better at diagnosing it, because I mean, again, it's one of those things where, you know, fifty years ago people were like, I don't know that he's forgetful, but there are there are things that do tend to

get kind of over diagnosed. Absolutely, but I mean that would have been one. And then he also could have, you know, had that he could have just had a little bit of a seizure or a stroke or something like that, and that would be really hard. That would be hard, especially for the kind of damage that his body took. To figure out post mortem, it would be um.

It was suggested that along the this kind of I know dovetails into the dementia is that it was suggested that maybe he was just kind of daydreaming and not Yeah, I kind of got hypnotized and that's what caused it. Except one thing to keep in mind is that it's two sets of rails that go north south, so one is the south line, one is the north line, and they cross each other just before the platform, and where that X happens, there is a notable jump or jolt

to the train. It's it's a bump, it's you know. So that and the noise of the platform, everybody says should have been enough that if the motor min was literally just gathering wool, he should have come to his senses quite quickly based on that alone, and that should have jolted him. I guess this is I'm just doing

the Devil's advocate thing for this one. But haven't you ever had those times where you're kind of staring off into space and somebody says something and you kind of come back, but you keep staring off in a space. Do you ever have that? Oh? I get that a lot where like actually sometimes I get into physical pain if I like snap out of it too fast to stare off into space since somebody says something and I'm like, oh, here I am, but I have to keep staring off

or else. Okay, now I can come back, don't come back in phase? Is not all at once, but uh, one would present that he could have come back in a couple of stages and still made it. I think, Yeah, just that just doesn't really seem to happen to that many people, because if it did, we have a lot more dead pedestrians and things like that. You know. So you're saying, is I'm weird. I'm saying that you are probably not the norm in that. The good news is

I don't do it when I'm driving. Well, thank goodness. Um, Now there were the other thing that and again this is the things that were really hard to diagnose properly, is there were suggestions that he had he had suffered what were some pretty rare or exotic conditions that that are a cute you know, they just happened that one or two times. That would be akin to like, as you said, the locked in scenario, you know, locked in

his brain but not able to move. But those are things that that are just so difficult to diagnose, just disregarded by the the investigating committee. Yeah, and again, I mean blackouts can be just a one off, you know, a couple of time things they don't even have to be associated with anything. Your brain can just be like, you know, buy for a little bit. And usually granted, usually those do coincide with the you collapse or blah blah.

But it is possible to have your brain go and not your body at least for a couple of minutes. It seems rather unlikely, though. We're gonna move on to the next theory. The next theory is mechanical failure, and it's got a couple of subsections to it. So there's actually some explanation that I need to do. I was gonna say, you need to tell us about the mechanics first,

I do. I do. So. First off, I talked about this earlier, is that the train that was the train that was involved, it was a tube stock, and again that is the stock of trains that is used in the tube. They had been in service at that time for over forty years. They did. And you know, these trains, they apparently worked well because currently some of them, though they've been decommissioned in the tube, there's still some of

them running on the aisle of White. So those trains weren't all that bad that as long as they were maintained. I think that was one of the issues. And well, we're gonna get into that. But before we get into maintenance stuff, let's talk about the train operation, because that that's going to really be paramount for the stuff that's coming up for I get into the train operation. I have to say thank you to both Alistair and Anthony.

Thank you so much to those guys for helping me understand the nuts and bolts of how the cab worked. That really really made a big difference for me. So here's how the train works. The driver stands in the cab and has their left hand and their right hand on top of for lack of a better term, two columns and left and in the right hand column. The left hand column has a control on it that swings back and forth, and that is the application of the brakes.

It's the brake handle. So the right hand column had the speed control for the train, which was a lever system. So think about if there's a clock laying in a plane in front of you. The lever is off when it's at the three o'clock position, and then the driver would pull it and it would rotate to the six o'clock position and out. That's correctly if I'm wrong, but I had heard very read they have to push down on it. I'm not there yet. I'm not there yet.

That's the dead man switch part. I'm not there yet, So taking this in pieces, so you would move it from three o'clock to six o'clock to put the train into forward go, you know, to get power, and the easy way that there's this whole cereal and parallel thing which we'll talk about later, but think of it as a low and a high gear. Low gears at six o'clock and then when the train had enough speed, you would continue to push it to the left in an arc to the nine o'clock position, and that's where it's

high gear. That's the basics of the control of the operation. What you were talking about, Joe, is the dead man switch component of the control, and that is when it's in the three o'clock position. In order to move that lever, the operator of the train has to push it down and it took fifteen pounds of force to get it down enough before it would begin to rotate, and then then from there on they had to keep three pounds

pressure on it. But it is a dead man switch, and everybody you know what a dead man switches, whether you realize it or not. Because we're going to go back to the movies. There's that scene in the movies where the bad guy's got a bomb and he's holding a switch in his hand. If the good guy shoot him and he dies, he'll let go and the bomb will go off and drama ensues. But basically it is if somebody lets go of the switch and it turns off,

something is going to happen. Basic simple driver moves it to six walk and doesn't keep pressure on it and let's go. For some reason the breaks on the train. The dead man function would activate the brakes and stop the train. So that let's say somebody sneaks up and clubs our driver in the back of the head and he lets go of the controls, the train is going to automatically stop. And he said, how how much weight does it to? How much pressure does it take? Three

pounds of pressure to keep it down? Fifteen pounds to initially push it down. It's it's not it's not so it takes considerable a bit of force to push it down and then to maintain it. It's a notable, noticeable force because there is spring or air pressure trying to push it up. It's resisting the downward force that your hand is keeping on it. Basics overview, very basic of how controls work. I wonder how many te drivers like you know have had made themselves like a specially weighted

glove to make it easier. I've heard it's hard to do that all day pressed down. I don't think they actually made especially way to glove, but as we'll talk about later on, they did figure out some tricks to make it much easier on themselves. I was going to lean on it. That is one way to do it, but it's it's it's a it's in a position that I think is awkward to lean on. You'd be moving back and forth. Because think about like this train in

less than ten minutes, it made five stops. The longer trains, maybe a guy could get away with that. It went sorry and the arc went away from you, towards you, towards Yeah, so you're in the middle, and so you can if it was in the middle position, low gear, you could do that. Not so easy when it's in the nine o'clock position, which is the high gear, because you're going to rotate the train between low and high

gear for speed based on what you're doing. Yeah. I guess the other thing that I'll just go ahead and mention right now is that I have an issue with the idea that he would have ever gotten into high gear.

Given the shortness of this route, it's ten minutes. The trains accelerate quite quickly, and it's sounds to me like they come up to speed very fast and to be able to make those stuffs in that time, it sounds like you have to go from the six o'clock low gear to the nine o'clock position high gear quite frequently, because you're you're ramping the train up and then you're ramping it back. If you kept it in low gear,

you would never be on time, is my understanding. I could be wrong, but if a stick was shutting it off and coasting all the way up, you can see what you want. To give it a little blast speed, he'd want to be a high gear and then knock it back to full neutral and just coast his way on in. So let's go with In the mechanical failure theory. The first theory is that there was a bad break valve. And I'm gonna get into more descriptions of how stuff

on these trains worked. And I apologize, well, that's tymably not true because they know the tube system that they said afterwards that they examined the whole brake system and it was just flawless. That is knock, that is not entirely act. You're at. Joey seem to believe that there was absolutely nothing mechanically wrong with that train at all. So that's what they said. I know, I know, I know,

And to follow on what joe is getting at. That's the official inquest into the accident, which um what they did. The brakes on the train are electro pneumatic, which is a fancy way of saying they are air brakes that are electronically controlled, and that was actually one set of They had two sets of brakes on the train. Yes, there's the Westinghouse which is basically a kind of a heart brake system, and then the air brake system, the ep is it's referred to, so we're just gonna call

it the air brakes for the moment. But the air brake system runs through the entire length of the train, and because it's an air system, it's very simple in theory. There's a tank that has pressure in it, and when the driver or a passenger pulls the right handle, the pressure pours into the tube system that controls the brakes and that pressure then activates the brakes, which would then compress on the wheels. So just like when you step on the brake in your car, if it was done

by air. That's the simplest version of this, except it's an air system, so it has a bunch of valves in it to be able to turn things off to disconnected. And in the inquest, they noted that there was a couple of valves that were broken, and they presumed were broken because of the accident, because they say they took all of the lines off of the train and they reassembled them, and when they brought the system up to pressure, it came up to pressure. But it sounds like they

also replaced the broken valves to do so. But I don't see anything that says that they actually tested those valves. So I wonder if there is a scenario where a valve goes bad it therefore dumps all the pressure in the tank. So think of an air compressor. If it's got no pressure in it and you you hit the button, nothing happens, And poor Nussen is sitting there driving the train and he's pulling on the lever and nothing is happening.

It's a situation where I could see a guy just pulling, praying to God that the stupid thing will kick in, you know, like you only see it again in the movies when the brakes fail. Somebody's rapidly stomping on the brake pedal trying to get and he's doing the same thing with the brake handle, trying to get the sting to well, and I kind of wonder too, how you know, he must he should have known, but maybe he didn't know how far he had to go before the tunnel

did ended he should know? Yeah, yeah, I mean my two problems with that are, like, there's got to be a backup auxiliary emergency system somewhere. It's called the Westinghouse, okay. And then the other one is it was reported that he coasted in to his stops, So why would he be going full throttle when he should have been easing off the throttle five minutes back. Well, and that's and

that's a different theory. So that the passengers said that it felt like the and the witnesses said it looked like and felt like the train was accelerating, but it may have been up to speed and it could have been going thirty or forty miles and with no breaking just like, oh my god, craps flying by. Because you've been in a subway and you see things whizzing by, but it's dark and you don't really have a good impression of your speed. But suddenly when there's things for

frame of reference, like, holy crap, we're speeding up. Oh wait, no, we're slowing down, like I could see the other side of the coin to what you're saying. Sure, I mean, I don't know that that's the other side of the coin to what I'm saying. But maybe you're saying why was the train speeding up? No, I'm just saying why was it going that fast at all? If he was known to coast in, he should have eased up on

the throttle all like, much earlier. And if the breaking sist is not working, he still should be slowing down because he's coasting in because he's not hitting the throttle anymore. And they all he needed to do is let go, let go. Yeah. True in theory. So that's that's what I'm saying, is like, that's the big problem I have with that is that it sounds like he wasn't a

big user of the brakes anyway. So why was he going thirty forty miles an hour when he hit that station when he should have been coasting in By all reports of the way, he should tread off the power much earlier. Yeah, and then it wasn't just bad breaks, obviously, something else have been going on. Maybe didn't work either.

The breaks theoretically should have been able to stop it, no matter what theoretically they should have And and so we haven't talked about this, but these trains officially got examined for maintenance reasons on quite a rigorous schedule. This is officially speaking. They were looked at once a week I think it was basically once a quarter, and then they were Any major overhaul work was done once a year.

And according to the records, this train was spotless. It had gone through its weekly review the night before the accident. Although there were accusations of falsifications, we talked about that. So yeah, yeah, because that's what is the name of the guy that you that. There's a guy named Anthony Bright. He used to work for the Tube System and he's he's posted a lot of interesting stuff on the web

about He's been a lot of accusations. I'm just gonna I was just gonna go ahead and preface this by saying anything that was commissioned in nineteen thirty eight, right, that's when this train was commissioned, the train was constructed. Yeah. Actually, I don't know that this is an individual one. That's

when they first started. It was, he was, but that at least, you know, thirty years old, it's not going to be spotless no matter what, there's gonna be some opponents would have been replaced on a regular basis, engines and brakes and wheels and stuff like. I'm just eating the interior as were replaced. I'm just casting aspersions on the fact that it was quote unquote spotless. There's gonna be minor things that needed to have happened. So I guess what I what I mean when I say spotless

is there's always a lemon in the bunch. There's always that one car number fifty two. Look fifty two broke down again. Big shocker there. That kind of when I say that it's it was a regular train. It didn't have any major issues. It got its maintenance officially speaking, and it didn't have any problems. But the accusations that that Joe found in the comments section that I didn't

go into, say quite the different story. Uh yeah, now he uh, he said a lot of the maintenance staff at East and I guess that's where they did the maintenance. He said, they were stealing the batteries, stealing the mercury from these retarders that we're part of the breaking system. Basically anything else, as he says, they could sell to the scrappy. To quote him, so, I said, instead of maintaining the trains, they were spending their worktime stealing from

the trains. He also makes the accusation which I find interesting because this goes into the next theory, which is I call it the engine theory. One of the things he says is he says that these cars were coupled together in threes. So there were three cars. Yeah yeah, so three cars locked together, then another three cars connected to that. That's how we have the first three cars

and the rear three cars. And according to him, you could only drive on the head and the tail or from the head and the tail of that three car system. Even though these cars were technically designed so that any of those three cars could be the head or tail of a group. Because of mechanical issues, they had permanently coupled them together so they could scavenge the controls from the middle car and the interior of the front rear car to have stuff for the prints because there were

some mechanical issues with the actual driver level system. According to him, Yeah, no, he said that they were worn out and they needed to be replaced, and so they basically just they scavenged apart from the train and uh and he also said as far as the brooke and valve there he goes, he says, there could have been it could have been like a loose or a defective valve.

They said. Also, the valves are throughout the train. He said, somebody opening a valve deliberately or inadvertently could also sabotage the brake system, whether somebody meant to or not being a prankster or just realizing they were causing a mistake or deliberate sabotage. So that that brings you know what, So I hadn't thought about that until just now. But you remember we talked about the eighteen year old kid

who was the guard on the train. One of the things he told the inquest when they said, you know something about why didn't you pull the handle and initiate the Westinghouse brakes and stop the train. Is he said, Well, he had gone to the other into the train and was rooting around looking for newspapers to read because obviously it was boring. And then he was reading the paper not paying attention. That's why he didn't pull the brake handle.

But what I'm getting at here is if the trains are in the tail section cab and he is rooting around, it's possible he could have knocked a valve. It could have accidentally done it too, or he could I mean, I'm not I'm not blaming this kid at all, but it just suddenly that dawned on me from that that

stuff that you're looking at right there. Yeah, And if he had actually, you know, if he had actually understood the operation of it when apparently, according to an Anthony Brake, if a failure of the electro pneumatic system, what that happened.

What that causes is a discharge of air from the system into the driver's cab, which he said could be unpleasant because it's like not just air, but it has like its gonna have dust and oil, oil oil droplets and things like that, and so it could have been either a spiteful prank, because I had heard that the two of them, the Harrison and Newson, didn't necessarily get along that well, which is funny because a lot of the times it's referred to as they had an okay

working relationship, they just were massively different in ages. So or yeah, or it could have been attended it's kind of a fun little prank. Yeah, he's get this little blast of this little cab with all this crap, you know. Yeah, and maybe so it could have been inadvertence. Well, yeah, I mean it's possible right that there was that it was intended as this. He understood that you would get

like the blast of air in the cab. He didn't understand that while you give that blast of air in the cab, you functionally just decimate the brake system the pressure therefore the brakes. I mean, so that's certainly possible. Yeah, but of course that doesn't account for the continued even if the train wasn't accelerating into the station, if it was still going the same speed, the lack of brakes doesn't really account for that. So there's there's Yeah, they're

part of the theory of the engines. That I'm looking at. One of the things that I was looking at was the possibility of the fact that the the speed lever was actually stuck in the nine o'clock position because the drive shaft, and I'm presuming that they are referring to

the drive shaft of that lever itself was broken. And they said, well, we think that that's broken because of the impact of the train into the end of the tunnel, which is logical, I admit this, but I also wonder if it is a scenario where it is a weekend drive shaft of that lever and he puts it into high and it's the control rods snaps internally that that and suddenly the lever useless. Have you seen what the housing for that lever looks like? Not? So it is

a giant metal box, the main the main column. So there's the lever, and does it have like a you push it down and there's a gap in between, like there is a gap? Yes, Okay, So I'm formulating my new theory that that you know, well, prankster McGhee over here, it's like, oh, this will be fun. There will be like a little blast of air, but there's particular and in that particular is a little stone that gets blown up and kicked up into the crevice between the lever

and the housing, which functionally jams the throttle. And that could have happened pretty easily when that X we're talking about that train X where it like jumps, that something could have popped up in there. Basically just jams that lever into full throttle position. Would be an amazing coincidence because there's not so yeah, but I mean so to jam it, whatever detritus you're you're you're making up in

this scenario would have to come onto. So if the levers in the nine o'clock position, you would have to jam from the three o'clock side to keep the lever pushed down and in that position. Couldn't have just been in the couldn't be. It couldn't have been in under the gap between the nine o'clock position and the center of the clock position because the lever raises up, so

it could have been in the backside. But one thing that I did find interesting in the stuff that Joe had earlier that may account for this is that if there's something wrong with the control, Newson could have very well just said okay, you know, it's screwed. I'm gonna I'm gonna pull pressure off and let the dead man switch go. Except according to this guy's information about the

maintenance systems, it was notorious for that. Some of those two are not notorious, but some of those tubes would corrode because it's air, and air systems are notorious for having water in them condensation. So it england and it gets crowd in it and its seals and suddenly there's a the pressure that should be released from the pushing down of the lever or the letting go of it is maintained by whatever crud is in the line has fused it shut. So there's that also possibility that's more

of the brakes fail side. But there's a lot of stuff in this. I mean, it's just it's such a complicated machine. Yeah it is. Yeah, they're more complicated than they think. And I and I do find the poor maidenance theory to be at least a little bit compelling. Yeah, I think it's super compelling. It also, you know, gives there's a good reason for the inquest to have covered it up, right. You don't want mass hysteria of people suddenly thinking oh my god, the public transportation system is

no longer safe. Some some hedge are going to roll right. It's really easy to just say this guy he died is responsible. Passed the buck onto a dude who has already paid the ultimate sacrifice. Really, you know, you're not really slandering that much of his life. I presume that his widow still got her you know, pension checks and all of that stuff. So to me, it makes perfect sense that there was some huge maintenance error and there was like a large cover up. Just from a conspiracy standpoint,

that's that that makes sense. And the guys on the platform who witnessed him standing there staring straight ahead, there were how many I think there's there's at least half dozen statements there that many people really yeah, people, well people were waiting to catch the train to go the other direction. Yeah, but we wasn't. One of them was

an employee. I think there's something in that thing that you had that said most of the eyewitness reports were actually given by people who were employed by the Underground. Well exactly, there were members of the trade union in the Underground, and so because there's guys that work there, there's guys that made that you know, there's guards and

stuff like that. So there is so these were guys who maybe went along with the whole thing because you know, they were probably told by their bosses that, hey, you'll be rewarded for you know, just saying that you saw this, and they probably all those guys probably saw nothing. And there there is stuff that says that I can't gosh,

I wish I had his name. I think it was the guard he was, Yeah, it was the guard I think was immediately taken by the police to the police station and question and then taken for a walk like there's some senior old Harris. Right. Yeah, there's some hinky conspiracy level stuff that you're like, whoa, Well, that doesn't doesn't make a lick of sense. And the thing about it is is when you got this smoothed up train, that's just literally I just twisted up piece of wreckage.

It's gonna be really hard to prove mechanical failure. Although I gotta tell you people reconstruct crashed airplanes and they figured stuff out. That's true. Well here's the thing though. Here's the thing though, is that if you can let's suppose, for example, you're one of the head of say, the trade unions, and you're also you know, part of the transportation thing in the labor party. So this is your gig,

your responsibility. Now, do you really want a detailed inquiry into what's really going on with all these maintenance issues and people stripping the trains and stealing craft? Do you really want that? Or do you want or do you want to put this issue to rest as quickly as you possibly can, which they did, Yeah, they sure did. Two days. I think it took me. Yeah, the in quest actually was four days including lunch breaks, which yeah, which which by the way, today would be you know,

how long would it take? Eights? And well no, that's eight sixteen thirty two hours is the amount of time that it took to compile everything in sessions, where for today those investigations take one to three years. But yeah, the but know, that's the thing about it. To me, it was the whole by by getting it right out there right away. Oh saw the driver, he was just

standing there staring straight ahead. Obviously he did it, you know, I mean that just that just obvious the need for any sort of strict inquiry into what was really going on. This guy obviously scurred up, is what they're saying. Yeah, and so yeah, and that headed off a lot of unpleasantness, a lot of unpleasantness for a lot of people. Yeah, No, no, you're you're absolutely right. It's not that crazy of a

conspiracy theory. No, it's not, it's not. But I did I did read one other thing that made me wonder, maybe to a degree, if this they were right and it was operator error. And that's our final theory, which

is that he made a massive mistake. So if we go back to controls of the train, we talked about how much pressure it takes to you know, to push it down from three o'clock and then once it's in the six o'clock position, you know a little bit of pressure to keep it down, but then to go to the nine o'clock position and to keep pressure downward, pressure on it is not easy because that's a straight arm thing. Let's say he's not doing what you suggested, which is

leaning on it. Well, I'm I'm envisioning leaning on at six right, at nine, it would be hard. Well, at six o'clock it's right in front of you. Put your arms straight down on right right. Okay, So let's let's go back to the engines, and briefly I talked about they had a low gear and kind of a high gear scenario, so the electric engines, just to get the details covered they had. This is from I'm not an electrical engineer, so please nobody, you know, just put me

on the spit for this. But actually that their motors not engines. Not just if you don't want people like you know, making fun of or for Joe to put me on the engine the thing because I called it a an engine instead of a motor, or it's a motor not an engine, or the other way around exactly. Okay, So the point is is that for it from electrical perspective, they had what they referred to as full series, which was the low gear, and then there was par full parallel,

which was the high gear the nine o'clock position. Well, there was an interesting little catch in the whole system, which is that once the control was at that nine o'clock full parallel position the high gear, the driver could pull the handle back to the six o'clock position, and as long as nothing interrupted to the speed of the train,

it would stay in high gear. So even though it should be transitioning down the low gear, unless the driver moved it back towards three o'clock to disengage the motors and reset it, it would stay in high gear. So what kind of kind of like neutralized as a whole

dead man switched thing up. Well, it does to a degree because now it's well, drivers did it all the time because it's much you you cycle up, you get to speed, and then you pull it back to the six o'clock from nine to six, and you put your elbow on it, lean on it right, because it's much

easier to hold at six o'clock than the nine o'clock position. Well, I wondered, because about a week prior to the this whole thing, and I think it was the Monday of that week, or maybe the monday before, he was reported to have missed a stop by several cars. He didn't stop in time, and he hadn't been on the job but a year, and doesn't sound like he was doing any of the major lines. But if the experienced guys are doing this and somebody says, oh, hey, Newson, here's dude,

here's a trick. This will make so you're not keeping your arm locked out, your shoulders not gonna hurt YadA YadA YadA. Tells him how to do it, but he doesn't get exactly how the motors and the pattern works. So he thinks, okay, I pulled it into the six o'clock position. We're going, and he thinks the processes he has to have go from nine to six to three to disengage the motor incorrectly rather than just kicking it over to the compremately. He just has the timing wrong.

He has something about the or the operation of that that little trick wrong. He could have stopped late that time a week ago and then said, well let me give it a try again, and accidentally put it, you know, not understanding put it into high gear and kept it into high gear when he thought that he was shifting it into low or just something broke off inside. Well, yeah, again, that's at the mechanical level. I just looked at this and thought, well, this is this is behavior that drivers

did to operate. I wonder if a guy not knowing the right way to do that trick could completely screw it up. I have simple trial, especially when you have a break right there. You know that's true, except I see people driving down the street. The simple thing is you make a turn and if your turn signal doesn't turn off, you turn your turn signal off. Yet I see people driving down the freeway for fifteen minutes with their damn turn signal. That's a simple thing, but doesn't

mean people do it right. I recently found out that newer cars often don't have a sound associated with blinkers. Really, yeah, so that explains why people are not doing that, because they don't know that they're blinkers only for cars that are, you know, two or three years old, not for the last sixty years of history. I know that. For me, it's something about my my particular hype. The my steering wheel always blocks the turn signal indicator. You can adjust that, yeah,

but yeah, but I haven't. But and and so I do. I found myself doing that sometimes if I'm on the freeway because I'm getting so much freeway now as I can't hear it, you know, and I can't see it because the steering wheels blocking it. So I just like, so I just think back to the theory. The point is that I think that there may have been he may have screwed up in trying to do something with

the control. I don't know if this is something wrong with me or like what, But I'm way more prone to believe that there's like wide systematic problems with steelings that people wanted to keep quiet about, Yeah, than like one dude who seems like a wholesome guy making a

big mistake like that. I think I would think that if it were me and I was heading to the end of the line and a dead end, and not by the dead end we made solid wall brick wall, I would be more inclined to use, you know, the balls out thing earlier in the line and then say and be a little more conservative as my in my approach to the final station at the end of the line. Yeah, I guess I I agree, I wouldn't be trying out

that new thing. What I understand, it sounds like Newson was working the short run a lot, so maybe he had been told that he was going to give the opportunity to work one of the longer lines, and he wanted to figure this thing out before he was on the longer line, and it was a bad idea. Again, I don't think that's what it is. But because I read about that driving habit, it always it piques my interest and I have to ask, I always have to

ask the question. I still it seems like even if he's sort of forgotten the whole thing, he still would have figured it out before the end, you would think, so, yeah, which it makes me inclined to believe that either something was wrong with the drive system or something was wrong with brakes. The weird thing about the drive system is you remember how I talked about the motors engines or

motors motors? Okay, the motors. They have the full parallel and the high gear and the low gear full parallel series. Don't ask me, Joe, no, no, I know what they mean. But the question is are we talking about more than one motor or more than one battery or both? I don't ask me. What I want to talk about is the fact that when the wheels of the train disconnected from the track, it reset the motor to whatever the

current setting of the drive control is. So, for example, if it's in high gear, or it thinks it's in high gear, but the drivers put it in low and it runs across that X, the motor disconnects from the system momentarily as it goes over the as gaps, which would drop it into low gear because that's why that's receiving electrical input from Yes, yes, which makes me what makes me not quite a hundred percent sure that I believe that there was a breakage or a lock up

in the dry control system, and more inclined to think that maybe there was something wrong with the breaking system. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know either. I think we've gotta need to take a trip to London. I think they have one of these things in museum and we could take it apart. We just go to the Isle of Wight. Yeah, we're running around on the Isle of Wight. Yeah, they're even up above ground, so we don't even have to get you know, dirty in the tunnel in coral

around and look at this. I'll do it. Yeah, alright, Okay, well we've we've exhausted this one. Yeah, I'm gonna go. But yeah, final theory, I'm gonna go for the conspiracy to just hush hush up a lot of mouthfeasance. I agree, it's malfeasance for malfeasance's sake, malfeasance all around it. Okay, so well, if you want to read any of the material that we have, we will be putting at least some of the links up on our website. The website is of course Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. You can

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Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com. And we're still replying to every email. We're getting slower about it, but we're still replying to every email that comes through. Sometimes it takes a couple of days or something. So I guess with that, I'm gonna motor on out of here for me. Yeah, I'm just gonna say, man,