The Armagh rail disaster happens on June 12, 1889 near Armagh, Ulster, Ireland, when a crowded Sunday school excursion train has to negotiate a steep incline; the steam locomotive is unable to complete the climb and the train stalls.
The train crew decides to divide the train and take forward the front portion, leaving the rear portion on the running line.
The rear portion is inadequately braked and runs back down the gradient, colliding with a following train.
Eighty people are killed and two hundred and sixty injured, about a third of them children.
It is the worst rail disaster in the UK in the nineteenth century, and remains Ireland's worst railway disaster ever.
To this day, it is the fourth worst railway accident in the United Kingdom.
At this time it is the worst rail disaster in Europe and leads directly to various safety measures becoming legal requirements for railways in the United Kingdom.
This is important both for the measures introduced and for the move away from voluntarism and towards more direct state intervention in such matters.
