In the early hours of 6 July 1978, a fire broke out in a sleeping car train near Taunton, Somerset, England.

In response to the incident, British Rail adopted various fire safety measures on the newly introduced Mark 3 passenger carriages.

However, with steam locomotives gone by the 1970s, and with boilers proving unreliable and expensive to maintain, the decision was made to change to electric train heating (ETH).

[1] The main store for bed linen on the Plymouth service was at Old Oak Common depot near London Paddington.

[1] A major fire developed and the train was stopped at 02:41 near Silk Mill signal box about a mile short of the station in Taunton, Somerset, by the communication cord being pulled.

[3] In the same debate another West Country MP Robin Maxwell-Hyslop, the Conservative MP for Tiverton pointed out that 111 years earlier an inspector reporting on "the Irish Mail crash" - which actually was in 1868 - had warned that locking doors at the end of sleeping cars could result in passenger deaths and asked "should we not have learned by now?

"[3] Initial reports showed that fire crews had difficulty during the rescue operation because doors on the train were locked.