A disaster on the British rail network (Midland Railway) occurred on 21 June 1870 when two trains collided at Newark in Nottinghamshire, England, killing 18 passengers and injuring 40 others.
The crash was examined by Captain Henry Tyler of the Railway Inspectorate, and he was able to pinpoint the disaster in a broken axle on one of the goods wagons of the first train.
The engine driver stopped his train when he discovered that several rear wagons had suddenly derailed, one of which blocked the adjacent line.
The sudden failure of vehicle axles bedevilled the railways from their very beginning, a notorious example being the terrible Versailles train crash of 1842, when almost 100 passengers were killed.
Some of the first systematic studies of the problem were undertaken by William John Macquorn Rankine, and later by August Wöhler, who showed how fatigue cracks are started (as surface defects) and grow with each loading.