A devastating rear-end collision between two passenger trains near Bedford, England, has resulted in the death of 60-year-old driver Shaun Burton and left 100 people injured, including nine with life-threatening conditions. The crash, the deadliest on UK railways in 20 years, is under investigation with initial focus on a potential faulty signal or a failure of the train's automatic warning system.
The driver of a train who was killed in a crash which injured 100 people has been named as 60-year-old Shaun Burton. One train smashed into the back of the other on the same line near Bedford just after 5pm on Friday.
The collision killed the driver instantly and left nine people fighting for their lives in hospital. In a tribute, Mr Burton's grieving family said: 'We are devastated by his loss. Our thoughts are also with those affected by this incident.
' Of the 100 victims, 11 people were very seriously injured, a further 32 were seriously hurt, and 57 others suffered minor injuries, the East of England Ambulance Service (EEAS) said. It was the highest number of casualties of any rail disaster in the UK for 20 years. Both services were heading for London. The first, a 3.50pm service from Nottingham to St Pancras stopped on the track.
Then the 4.40pm Corby train, which had stopped at Bedford station just two minutes prior, crashed into the back of it. Investigators are looking into whether a faulty signal led to the collision. Specialist crane equipment has also arrived this morning at the crash site which will be used to lift the two trains off the tracks. The crash was declared a major incident by the British Transport Police, as police and paramedics rushed to the scene.
The much-loved driver joined East Midlands Railway in 2019 and became a Mainline Train Driver in 2024, where he often worked the Corby to London route. He previously held roles at Dews Coaches and Arriva Bus, before moving into working in railway jobs. Mr Burton was also a parish councillor in Great Stukeley and a member of Huntingdonshire Council.
Dave Calfe, general secretary of Aslef, the train drivers' union, said: 'We are all heartbroken by the death of Shaun Burton which leaves a hole in the lives of his family, friends, and colleagues, which will never be filled. Shaun, a driver at East Midlands Railway, joined the railway relatively late in life. He loved public transport - he used to work on buses and coaches - before he became a train driver seven years ago.
He was dedicated to the job, and devoted to his colleagues and enormously popular at his depot. The railway family grieves his passing; no-one should go off to work in the morning and not come home. Our thoughts are with his family and friends tonight.
' Network Rail today described the crash as a 'tragic, isolated incident' and announced that rail services will be disrupted until June 28 while a 'complex recovery operation' begins to remove the damaged trains and carriages. The East Midlands Railway (EMR) service is thought to have come to a halt due to a fault with a safety system which warns train drivers if there is a red signal ahead.
The driver of the stopped train from Nottingham had been reporting a fault to staff on the phone when the other slammed into it. It is thought that the second train may have failed to trigger its automatic warning system, which is normally used if a train passes a yellow or red signal without breaking. Ordinarily this causes an alarm to sound in the driver's cab. If that warning is also ignored, the train protection system automatically applies the breaks.
It is not known if this malfunction led to the crash. Rail expert Tony Miles, from Modern Railways magazine, said the crash was puzzling 'because if the track is occupied, it shouldn't be possible to clear the signals'. Mr Miles said that while a driver could theoretically decide to cross a red signal if they wanted to, 'they would normally only do that because they had been given permission by a signal box because there was a fault'.
He added: 'Obviously it's a rear-end collision, they were going in the same direction, so the rear one was going faster than the one it caught up with for some reason. So the question must be how that train has got into contact with the train that it was following. It's either gone past a signal that was telling it should stop, or the signal was faulty, or the driver has made a mistake in some way.
Over the years, all those different scenarios have happened.
' Speaking at a press conference near the scene on Saturday, British Transport Police Chief Constable Lucy D'Orsi said: 'There will be a lot of questions as to what exactly happened on (Friday) night. I would like to reassure everyone that specialist investigators from British Transport Police are working with colleagues at the Rail Accident Investigation Branch to gather the facts and determine what has happened. They are extremely experienced and I would ask that we all refrain from speculation.
' The Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) said on Saturday that its inspectors continued to gather evidence at the scene. 'RAIB will conduct a full, independent safety investigation into this tragic accident,' the agency said in a post on X
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