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By Root 1754 0

way. Although they had in theory been ‘on active service’ since the outbreak of war and had volunteered to a man for foreign service, most of their soldiering had been spent guarding coastal defences within shouting distance of their home town of Leith and while they appreciated the home comforts that were still within easy reach, it was hardly the adventure they had anticipated. It was almost a month since Leith had given them a huge send-off. Even the Provost and Town Council had turned out for an official farewell and the battalion marched to the station through crowds of people who mobbed the pavements to cheer the local boys leaving, as they supposed, for the front. It was something of an anticlimax to find that the move took them no further than Larbert, a mere twentyfive miles inland along the Firth of Forth. But now they really were off to the front. Rumour had it that they were bound for the Dardanelles, and rumour for once was right.

It was a complicated business to embark a whole brigade of four battalions at the small station at Larbert and it was no less complicated for the railway authorities to filter numerous troop trains into the mainline network without unduly disrupting the normal flow of goods and passenger traffic. It had been a long day of parades and roll-calls, blankets to be handed in, kits and rifles to be inspected, iron rations to draw for the long journey to Liverpool, and, for the officers, a thousand and one last-minute details to be seen to before the Battalion moved off. It was almost midnight before the first half of the Battalion, A and D Companies, marched out of camp to entrain. The five hundred men of B and C would follow two hours later in another special train.

By the time a fatigue party had loaded the ammunition, by the time a final roll-call had been held under the dim station lights and the two companies were divided into platoons and formed fours to entrain in batches of eight to each compartment, the night was far advanced. The pipe band that played them aboard the train, and would play them off again at the other end, piled into the front carriage with their drums and instruments and had the luxury of having it to themselves. The battalion signal sections and machinegunners were together in the second coach, and the colonel and the officers took their places in the first-class compartments immediately behind. It was a quarter to four in the morning before the train finally got up steam and pulled out of the station and by that time the excitement had died down. A few enthusiasts set up card schools. Most were glad to relax and by six o’clock on a fine May morning, as the train trundled through the Borders towards the station at Kirtlebridge, almost all of them were sound asleep. This was a great disappointment to Ella Plenderleith.

Mrs Ella Smith, née Plenderleith.

My father was the signalman at Kirtlebridge. We lived at the station and he always used to tell us when the troop trains were coming through, because we liked waving to the soldiers as they went past. I was fifteen at the time. It must have been about half past six when the train went through, because my father was on duty at six o’clock and it was a while after that when he shouted to us that the train would be coming past. We hurried up and got dressed and went outside to see it go through, but we were a bit disappointed that morning because a lot of the soldiers were sleeping and not many waved back to us. It was my father’s first job that morning after he went on duty to clear that train through and signal to the next box down the line that it was on its way. The next box was Quintinshill. It was about six miles away just outside Gretna village – the last mainline signal box in Scotland.

Not long afterwards there was a tremendous crashing noise. We heard it six miles away! A few minutes later my father called out from the signal box to tell us what had happened.

What had happened was the worst rail crash in history. Like William Plenderleith at Kirtlebridge, signalman James Tinsley should have come on duty