Soham On-Line - History & Tourism - The 2nd June 1944 Train Explosion at Soham

Soham Railway Station was officially opened on 1st September 1879 when the Ely to Newmarket Railway line was built and was, for many years, a focal point of town life. There was a busy bookstall, two waiting rooms, one for the ladies and one for the gentlemen, with large open fires on cold days. There was a busy goods yard and 'The Crown Hotel' landau carriage met arrivals to the town. The Rail Station at Soham and surrounding area was destroyed on 2nd June 1944 after a consignment of bombs travelling through the Town caught fire and blew up the Station and nearly Soham itself if it hadn’t been for four very courageous men Benjamin Gimbert - G.C., James Nightall - G.C., Frank Bridges and Herbert Clarke. The Station was never rebuilt but a platform was and services ran to Cambridge again. Soham Platform was finally closed down in 1965 instigated by Dr. Beeching. Shortly thereafter the Warren Hill Junction / Snailwell Junction Chord was removed severing the direct connection from Soham to Cambridge via Newmarket.

The title words were spoken by the Reverend Percy Fletcher Boughey in St. Andrew's Church on Sunday 4th June 1944 in preface to his tribute to the four brave railwaymen who, two days earlier, had saved the town of Soham from virtual destruction. Two had died, one lay critically injured and the fourth damaged in hospital after an otherwise successful and totally selfless attempt to save hundreds of lives. This was not the address planned by the vicar for his 'Salute the Soldier Week' service but another hastily prepared for a congregation waiting to give thanks for their deliverance. The wounded town was still in shock but its foundations were largely intact and the people were there to mourn the dead heroes and celebrate their own survival.

The summer had been warm and dry in Britain and its people after, nearly five years of war, were waiting for D-Day - the beginning of the end. All knew the landings in Europe were imminent and that the first list of casualties would follow all too soon. It was no time for crises on the home front to claim the front pages - and they seldom did with so much coming from the theatres of war, good or bad. The threats from the air had extended to doodlebugs, chugging over like motorcycles with flaming tails until they cut out to blast holes anywhere, and V-2 rockets diving on London, leaving huge craters and many casualties. The crisis that occurred in the small hours of Friday 2nd June 1944 in 'a market town in Cambridgeshire' could claim but passing interest in the national press at this time.
Not so for the people of Soham, that market town disguised at a time of geographical censorship, although they were soon to be reassured that but for acts of courage and self-sacrifice outstanding even in wartime their troubles would have been far worse.
London, on the very day of the Soham incident, was appointed the World's News Centre when the allied forces invaded and it was reported too that the United States Air Force had dropped 63,000 tons of bombs on Germany, the occupied countries and The Balkans in May and was stepping up the intensity all the time. On the previous Tuesday, 30th May 1944, the American Cemetery at Madingley near Cambridge was dedicated with due ceremony and all knew there were many more spaces to be filled there before the war was over.
Like most of my generation I was in uniform and while not far away it was some time before I knew the precise location of the Soham incident. In the meantime I might not have been unduly held by such headlines as 'THREE MEN SAVE A TOWN,' 'HE DIED LIKE A SOLDIER TO SAVE AN ENGLISH VILLAGE' and 'HERO SAVED TOWN FROM DISASTER.' I might have guessed sooner from the indecision of the national press on whether Soham was a town or a village! It was a long time after, following two years abroad, when the full story of that grim night was put before me, a story summarised many times since with freedom of interpretation, but which I now unfold from the beginning.
On 31st May 1944 a consignment of bombs and components for the United States Air Force was taken off ship and on to sixty-one railway wagons at Immingham on the Humber, destined for White Colne in Essex. This long train left Immingham Sidings at 2. 55am. On 1st June 1944, travelling so slowly that it took seven hours to cover the eighty-nine miles to March in Cambridgeshire.
It arrived at March Yard, which was subsidiary to the nearby marshalling yard at Whitemoor (where today stands the high security prison), where the wagons were, as always, carefully inspected. The ten leading wagons were then detached to be worked forward by convenient services later, leaving the fifty-one wagons and the guard's van in Number One Siding Coal Yard. These remained in the yard for fourteen-and-a-half hours unaltered in formation until they left at 12.15am. On Friday 2nd June 1944 as the delayed 11.40pm (1st June 1944) train from Whitemoor to White Colne.
Forty-four of those wagons were laden with 250-pound and 500-pound bombs, un-fused, amounting to approximately four hundred tons in all and another six with detonators and primers, fuses, wire release gear and bomb tail fins, all firmly stacked under tarpaulin sheets of low combustibility with the care that had prevented any major crisis in the transportation of weaponry on British railways throughout the war, one wagon remained empty.
This train was about 390 yards long and there were no gradients between March and Soham to unsettle such loads. For the four-and-three-quarter miles from Ely Dock Junction to Soham the line was, and is, single, while from Soham it was, and remains, double. The train stopped at Ely twice where observers saw nothing unusual aboard. All the Soham signals were clear for the train's approach when it was moving at between fifteen and twenty miles per hour with the engine steaming lightly along the level line. Then, a few yards beyond the Up signal, the driver, Benjamin Gimbert, noticed some steam issuing from the left-hand injector and looked out of his cab window. Although he could see but nine to twelve inches, into the left-hand rear corner of the first wagon above the rear of his tender Ben saw flames rising some eighteen inches from the bottom.
The flames were spreading rapidly as if taking hold, unaccountably, of inflammable material. He sounded his whistle to alert the guard and stopped the train gently, taking about three minutes, for any jolt could have proved disastrous. Having stopped some ninety yards short of the station platform ramps he urged his fireman, James Nightall, to get down to uncouple the burning wagon from the rest, advising him to take a coal hammer in case the coupling was already too hot to handle. Jim leapt to the task, released the coupling and climbed back on the footplate within a minute and Ben sped the engine and its fireball away, aiming to get it into the open country. 140 yards forward into the station, now illuminated by the burning wagon, he slowed down to shout to the signalman, Frank 'Sailor' Bridges: 'Sailor - have you anything between here and Fordham! Where's the mail!' But Frank was ahead of him, having not received the mail train and having requested another engine to tow the detached wagons away. Ben had crossed to the fireman's side to talk to Frank who was waiting on that offside platform with a full fire bucket hoping, forlornly, to douse the flames, putting his life at risk like the others to avert disaster.

He had no moment to answer or act. The earth shattered in one enormous blast, smashing him to the floor mortally wounded. Less than seven minutes had elapsed since Ben saw the fire. At approximately 1.43am. Forty-four general purpose bombs each weighing five hundred pounds, in total containing 5.14 tons of explosive content, went up as one, reducing the station to rubble, killing Jim Nightall outright, blasting Ben Gimbert some two hundred yards away.
The first miracle of this night was the courage these railwaymen found to face such responsibilities, the second was the survival of Ben Gimbert to tell the tale. He landed on grass near the Station Hotel and crawled his way to the doorstep of Horace Taylor's shop at the bottom of Station Road. He was then found by Railway Ganger Reed staggering about wanting to know if his mates and the rest of the train were safe. Jim's fate was not known at that moment but Ben at first refused to go to hospital until he knew. Red Cross women were in charge of the ambulance when it came and to spare them Ben, who weighed eighteen-and-a-half stones, refused to be carried on or off. Critically injured, he was kept in ignorance of Jim's death until an innocent visitor to his hospital bedside offered his condolences and thus set back the big man's recovery quite a bit.
There was a fourth hero in Herbert Clarke of Ipswich, the guard, who had suspected problems when the train slackened speed when his van was a train's length away from the distant signal. He saw the fire in the front wagon and helped his driver slow down with a light application of his van brake. When stationary the train is the responsibility of the guard and Herbert, recognizing the intention of Jim Nightall, got down and rushed forward to help him. The engine and its leading wagon moved away as he was still going forward. Then the blast hurled him back along the track some eighty feet and left him concussed. He gradually recovered enough to re-light the extinguished van lamps and then he walked back dazedly to the front of the train to ascertain the damage. Herbert was 59 and in deep shock but he gathered detonators to put down on the rails along the two-and-a-quarter miles back to Barway Junction, arriving at about 3.30am. utterly spent, where he was helped into the box by Signalman Cyril King. Herbert was not to know Frank Bridges had got his messages through before the blast destroyed all communications.
Indeed, judging by his quick reactions, Frank may have seen the fire before Ben, for he had aroused Sub-Ganger Will Fuller, who was living in Mount Pleasant Cottage a hundred yards from the station, soon enough to enable Fuller to notice the fire the moment the train pulled up about 230 yards away. Fuller was then pulling on his clothes by the bedroom window as he heard the uncoupling, then he saw the burning wagon moving forward until it was obscured by the station buildings. In moments the explosion shattered Fuller's cottage and buried him and his wife and daughter in the debris. It was Fuller later who gave evidence of seeing blue flames among the yellow rising from the wagon and of detecting a smell like burning gas. The possibility of this deriving from the residue of the wagon's previous load of bulk sulphur was studied at the inquiry.
It even seemed possible that Frank Bridges had been notified of the fire in the wagon by the Barway signalman, Cyril King, but King later avowed he saw nothing to disturb him on the train, saw no sparks coming from the engine and caught no smell of burning beyond the normal as the train slowly passed his signal box at about 1.31am. He saw one of the engine men exchange tokens using the line-side apparatus, watched the tail light of the train moving away and signalled 'Train out of junction' back to Ely Dock Junction. When the train was about three-quarters-of-a-mile away he saw a pink glow that he took to come from the firebox, then saw the train obscured by the bend and soon after heard the explosion.

Five others followed Ben and Frank to hospital with severe injuries including the station master, Harry Oliver, who had been found pinned under his bed badly concussed after the house had tumbled about him and his wife, his nineteen-year-old daughter Pat and his ten-year-old son Dick, who escaped with minor injuries. Mrs Oliver wandered away seeking shelter and was taken in, but there was no room for her daughter who had to go elsewhere. Mrs Oliver suffered from shattered nerves for a long time after this night.
The streets of Soham were littered with glass, shop goods were blown into the streets and the station was replaced by a crater fifteen feet deep and sixty-six feet across. Only a buffer and a socket casting were left of the wagon, the rest being driven downwards, there to stay so that the lines could be restored quickly at that time of acute national emergency. The tender was a twisted mass still attached to the engine which was wholly derailed yet received no serious structural damage other than to the cab, its light platework, boiler and cylinder lagging. The larger part of the train disconnected by Jim Nightall lethal in its content, was hit by no worse than minor splinters and thus the town of Soham was saved from utter destruction by human courage beyond praise. So many of those who recalled the night for me would have been killed or badly maimed but for the self-sacrifice of those men.
Hardly had the fight from the burning truck and the explosion extinguished themselves than they were replaced by flames from the nearby gas holders, eerily dancing over the scene of destruction. The huge advantage thereafter was having so many trained units at hand to deal with every problem. The Wardens and Home Guard were swiftly there tending the injured and comforting the rest and it was they who summoned the other services needed, all of them on wartime alert. It was a clear but moonless night but luckily the electricity and water supplies were not affected and these were soon vital to the work in hand. The National Fire Service soon put out the fire at the gas works and they were soon joined by the Local Rescue and Ambulance Party reinforced by Royal Air Force ambulances, by lsleham Ambulance Party, Burwell Rescue Party, Fordham Red Cross Ambulance and Royal Air Force personnel from Snailwell and Newmarket.
Once the seriously injured were away to hospital the minor cases were taken to an Emergency Rest Centre set up in the Grammar School, supervised by the Women's Voluntary Services who worked in shifts throughout the weekend, closing down to allow the school to resume on the Monday. Damage had been done to the official Local First Aid Point, but the nurses were able to treat several cases there. The local police sergeant set up an Incident Post in one room of Roselyn, the Bradleys' cottage in Mereside, the church hall was used by the YMCA for serving tea and a mobile canteen arrived from Cambridge to sustain all who need more than tea throughout a traumatic night. The Queen's Messengers; Flying Squad also brought in cooked food and supplies in large containers from the emergency depot in Over. At the Rest Centre there was also an Information Bureau using a travelling van with a loudspeaker and clothes were brought in from Cambridge and parcels from the Lord Mayor of London's Distress Fund arrived during the following week and were distributed in the Baptist schoolroom by the Rotary Club and representatives of the 'Daily Sketch.' The British Red Cross also treated many minor injuries and the two local doctors were kept busy all night and for days afterwards catching up with minor injuries that might have turned worse.
Gradually the chaos of that night gave way to the relative order of day, unravelling the extent of the damage and the miracle of Ben Gimbert's escape from the epicentre of the blast. Houses and shops as far away as the high street and to the north of the town in Julius Martin Lane and south to Stone Bridge had roofs, walls, ceilings and windows shattered. On the same day as the blast the Wardens took a census of the damaged buildings, as a result of which about a hundred workmen were brought into Soham to speed up repairs and many homes were repaired by evening. It was estimated there had been damage to 761 properties in all, 13 of them beyond repair, 153 seriously damaged of which 36 were rendered temporarily uninhabitable, these within 350 yards and the rest within 900 yards of the explosion. The church, only 700 yards away, suffered only damage to glass. Windows were shattered in Wicken and Fordham.

Fourteen public authorities gave assistance to Soham, bypassing red tape with admirable enterprise at a time when emergency plans were constantly being implemented. Many vehicles were made available to transport the homeless to friends and temporary homes and very quickly too at such a time the Army Police set up a guard on the district. Nothing was left to chance. Rationing had kept people low in stocks of food, although hoarding had been an early symptom of the war. Emergency ration cards were provided, entitling the holders to a week's supply of food and clothing coupons and grants of money were issued for crisis needs. Even a mobile laundry van arrived to wash what was taken to it and the dignitaries to arrive included the Bishop of Ely and the Regional Commissioner and other top personnel of Civil Defence Control from Cambridge mid Newmarket. The country was geared for worse than this night at this and earlier stages of the war.
My kin, the Bradleys, living in Roselyn cottage near the Station Hotel, who were bombed awake like the rest, found themselves uninjured but the house damaged. The roof facing the station had lost its slates but it was the rebound, caused by a vacuum from the explosion, that hit them harder, forcing in the windows on the other side and a bedroom door off its hinges, wedging it firmly in the door frame. Eva Bradley, the mother, rushed at once to her baby John lying in his cot, flinging herself over him but finding him unharmed. When she returned to her bed she found three bricks lying where her head would have been. She thought later of her china cabinet and its precious treasurers, but although the locked door had been forced open and shut and although they removed rubble and dust, not one item of china or glass had been broken! The Bradleys moved into an empty cottage next door while theirs was being repaired.
Not far from the station stands Clark and Butcher's Mill, then in overtime production for the war effort, but only its steam engine had been damaged in the explosion. The mill's Managing Director, Jack Clark, recorded his impressions of that night in 'A Master Miller Remembers' in the 1970's. Shocked awake in the adjacent Mill House, he trod broken glass to the smashed window only to be stabbed in the face by a broken curtain rail. The mill was his responsibility, but in the road he was soon distracted by people wandering about dazed and dusty as if after an earthquake. Many had no idea what had happened or what to do or where to go, so he led some back to his house where his wife, a native of Wicken, made tea for them, boiling the kettle on an open fire since gas supplies had been cut off for both Soham and Fordham. Mr Clark was also a special constable and a member of the Home Guard.
A Londoner living nearby, Mrs E. Tyrell, said the night was worse than any she had suffered in the blitz and her neighbour, Mr Wallace, an ex-naval man, likened the blast to the force of a typhoon. Another nearby resident, Mr J.T. Skipper, pulled his three-year-old grandson to safety as part of the roof of their cottage was crashing down on his bed, the boy escaping with no worse than a scratch. The flames from the gas works were unnerving while they lasted and the Maltons, living in numbers one and two Gas Lane, were relieved to see them put out. The blast had damaged their cottages but left them uninjured, the only casualty being the family canary which succumbed to gas fumes. Two chunks of the station platform landed in the garden of number two, now called 'The Maltons,' where lives Edith Canham, nee Malton, and husband Stuart, formerly of Wicken, and there the chunks remain as weighty ornaments.
There are light-hearted recollections of the night. John Gilbey, then aged five, of Bushel Lane on the other side of Soham, recalls waking up and wondering at the strange whirring sound downstairs, The family gramophone, long seized up, had been freed by the blast, but once it had wound down it would not wind up again. John Ford, the Biology and Chemistry Master and Deputy Headmaster at the Grammar School awoke in the belief, like many others, that this was a bombing from the air, inexplicably without siren warning. As ARP Post Warden he pulled his trousers over his pyjamas and cycled down Clay Street over glass - without getting a puncture - and joined the helpers. For a few days he was apt to be known as 'Bluey' for the colour of those pyjamas showing below his trousers. There had to be moments to ease the strain.

Eric Isaacson, a Soham butcher and, at 24, a Leading Fireman in the National Fire Service, received directions soon after the blast to go to the blazing gas works then to the Goods Yard, which received some damage, to attend a small fire there. When an American officer asked him if he had seen the fireman, Eric directed him to the gas works, not realising he meant the engine fireman. Corrected, he accompanied that officer to the crater and got down into it with him. An ambulance backed to the crater using a small searchlight which soon exposed the body of Jim Nightall. As the smallest of the four men now in the crater Eric was persuaded to release the body from the rubble near those huge driving wheels and the hissing locomotive and the scalding heat of the firebox. He found Jim with his head resting on an arm as if in sleep. His shirt was open baring his chest where scalding had peeled the skin. He turned the twisted body so that the others could pull it out, then he crawled his way out from the worst ordeal of his life.
There was still some fear at this stage that the bombs on the other wagons might go up and Eric was one of those ordered to inspect them, adding danger upon danger to one who was fast asleep not long before. It would have occurred to no-one on that night that locomotive W.D.7337 of the 2-8-0 'British Austerity' heavy goods type weighing 128 tons with tender, lying there stricken, would come to be rebuilt. Yet it was. Originally built by the North British Locomotive Company of Glasgow as works number 25205 in 1943, it ran after refurbishment for many years on the Longmoor Military Railway in Hampshire as 'Sir Guy Williams' and was finally retired and scrapped in 1967.
The Soham line was vital for carrying heavy freight at this time and it had to be restored as soon as possible. To this end the Cambridge breakdown crane arrived in Soham at 5.10am. to re-rail the engine and remove the wreckage of the tender. Through Lieutenant-Colonel C.P. Parker of the Royal Engineers the Railway Company acquired the assistance of about a hundred United States engineer troops with two bulldozers to fill the crater and firm the surface to carry new rails where 120 feet had been destroyed. This party arrived at 10.50am. about an hour-and-a-half after the arrival of the Company's ballast train and they worked throughout the day. The two lines through the station were reopened to traffic at 8.20pm. after a lapse of only eighteen-and-a-half hours. The station, as such, was opened for light passenger traffic next day, June 3rd, with temporary booking facilities, but emergency signalling had to remain for a further four days.
The Inquiry into the accident was opened on 16th June 1944 headed by Major G.R.S. Wilson for the Ministry of War Transport, assisted by Captain N. Fawcett the Inspector of Explosives at the War Office. Ben Gimbert was the chief witness, supported by Herbert Clarke and Will Fuller, but none of them was fit to give evidence until 18th July 1944, although Ben was interviewed briefly on 5th June 1944. The first suspicion was that an over-heated axlebox had caused the fire but every possibility was studied and nobody was certain at the end.

The Carriage and Wagon Examiner at March, G. Stevens, a man of long experience, had taken an hour to examine the train there, feeling all the axleboxes after the eighty-nine mile journey with the back of his hand, tapping all the wheels and looking round and under every wagon. Such men were always alert for hazards, not to mention sabotage, at that time, and were taking no chances. Stevens found no defects and no axlebox likely to overheat to cause a fire and none of the wagons was overdue for oiling. He and two other examiners had seen overheated axleboxes but had never known one to start a fire. The War Office and the Railway Police probed for long into the possibilities of sabotage without finding any reason to believe this was the cause. An attempt to ignite one of the wagon sheets by using combustible material and simulated draught such as would fan flames on a moving train also failed to convince and Major Wilson was forced finally to summarize thus: 'I think it must be assumed that there was some substance present in the wagon which was particularly sensitive to ignition by a trifling spark from the train engine (or perhaps from the engine of a passing train) which otherwise would have proved harmless.' Nothing had come of trying to set light to a dusting of sulphur residue such as might have been clinging to the wagon and the Inquiry's conclusion must be said to have been inconclusive.
A 'Salute the Soldier' service had been planned for Soham church on the following Sunday, to include a parade in the Recreation Ground, but this was altered to a service of thanksgiving for the saving of Soham. The church needless to say, was packed. Tiny fragments of glass were still tinkling down from the windows as the Reverend Percy Fletcher Boughey began his address with the wholly appropriate words: 'But for such men as these . . ' There were big attendances too at the funerals of Jim Nightall and Frank Bridges on 6th June when donations to the Tribute and Relief Fund amounted to £1,760. This money was, however, distributed thinly rather than given to those who most needed it. Those funerals coincided, of course, with D- Day and all minds were soon turned to that.
The youngest person living in Soham on the night of the explosion was six days old. She was Diane, daughter of Gladys and Roger Turner, living so near at Mill Corner where the ceiling spilled dust over the bed without causing more damage to the occupants than leaving a piece of grit in the baby's eye. Her life was saved by brave men that night. Jim Brown had been the first Soham man to be called up for active service and when he and the other survivors came home for good it was, through the intervention of those railwaymen, to the town he had left behind.
The awards of the George Cross to Ben Gimbert and Jim Nightall were gazetted on 25th July 1944, the only instance of the award being made to two railwaymen for the same incident. The implication that Frank Bridges may not have been aware of the contents of the wagons when he came forward to assist must be dismissed, if only because if he had not known he would have anticipated the worst at such a time. Although drivers and firemen and others involved along the routes were given no specific details of the loads they were pulling or controlling they were seldom in any doubt during the war. The guard was fully aware since it was his responsibility to inspect the wagons and the signalmen along the routes were sharp on recognition. But with awards it appeared to be all or nothing and neither he nor Herbert Clarke received any acknowledgement of their deeds apart from being included in the inscriptions on the plaques placed in Soham church and, eventually, Soham Village College.
We should honour too the conscience and concern of the Americans present in this area at the time for the people of Soham after their shattering experience. The American Red Cross were soon distributing parcels, wonderfully varied in their contents at such a time of austerity, to all the infants in Soham. There never was such an interchange of sympathy and unit of purpose.

Extracts from 'But For Such Men As These' by Anthony Day,
Published by S.B. Publications, ISBN 1 85770 060 0.

In the early hours of 2nd June 2004, around fifty people turned out in the middle of the night and walked by candlelight from St. Andrew's Church to the site of the original station to mark the saving of Soham on the 60th anniversary. The actual time of the explosion was at 1.44am on 2nd June 1944 and present residents of the town gathered at the site to commemorate and give thanks for the bravery and courage of those four men, whose swift thinking and self-less actions saved the town from near-certain destruction. The train that exploded was carrying 51 carriages of bombs; each wagon had 40 bombs on it, each of which had 500lbs of explosives. As well as the candlelit procession, later on during the day two new Network Rail EWS Class 66 Freight Locomotives were named at the Whitemoor Sidings in March, Cambridgeshire in honour of Benjamin Gimbert and James Nightall who were both awarded the George Cross for their part in the incident. Gimbert and Nightall were previously recognised by the naming of two Class 47 Freight Locomotives back in 1981 but they have since been retired from service so it was fitting to have two new locomotives named in their memory again. The Vicar of Soham, The Reverend Tim Alban Jones MBE, blessed the loco named after Nightall. The remembrance of the events of that fateful week in 1944 were rounded off with a special service on the evening of Sunday 6th June 2004 at St. Andrew's Church with the Dean of Ely, the Very Reverend Dr Michael Chandler, as preacher. The attention of the wider world was very much on the commemoration of D-Day, but here in Soham we were very much aware of the incident in our town which happened during the run-up to the D-Day landings.


Network Rail EWS Class 66 Freight Locomotive Named 'Benjamin Gimbert G.C.'	Network Rail EWS Class 66 Freight Locomotive Named 'James Nightall G.C.'

(60th Anniversary Photographs Courtesy of Michael Rouse)

'But For Such Men As These' 60th Anniversary Edition Released in 2006

£6.50

Soham Museum Project has recently reprinted the book 'But for Such Men As These' by Anthony Day which forms part of 'Soham on the Home Front' project. The book's re-release coincided with the 60th Anniversary of the Soham Rail Disaster which took place in the early hours of the 2nd June 1944 during the Second World War.
The reprint was made possible by a grant from The Heritage Lottery Fund.

On Sale locally from:-
Soham Books, High Street, Soham, Cambridgeshire
Burrows Bookshop, High Street, Ely, Cambridgeshire
Priced at £6.50

Or by post from:-
c/o Soham Community History Museum
P.O. Box 21, The Pavilion
Fountain Lane, Soham
Cambridgeshire, CB7 5PL, England

Cost of the book by post is £8.00, including Post & Packaging (UK only)
Cost of the book for overseas is £12.00 made payable in UK Currency, UK Bank Cheque or by IRCS for the full amount

Brave Soham Rail Disaster Victims Remembered


Benjamin Gimbert G.C. Train Driver (1903 - 1976)	James Nightall G.C. Fireman (1922 -1944)	Frank Bridges Signalman (1896-1944)	Herbert Clarke Guard (1885 -1976)

The forgotten wartime heroes who gave their lives to save an entire town was recently celebrated with a commemorative artwork. On June 2, 1944, in Soham, fire broke out on the lead wagon of a train carrying 400 tons of bombs to the East Coast in preparation for D-Day. Only the bravery of four railway workers, two of whom uncoupled the burning wagon and drove it to safety, spared the town from total devastation. Driver Ben Gimbert miraculously survived as did the Guard Herbert Clarke, but Engine Fireman Jim Nightall and Signalman Frank Bridges were killed in a huge explosion flattening Soham station and shattering windows as far away as Wicken.

Now the four heroes have been finally be commemorated, after decades of calls for a permanent tribute, in an interpretive artwork which stands next to The War Memorial in Red Lion Square. The artwork is the culmination of nine years of work by the Soham Community History Museum, which won a £15,000 Heritage Lottery Fund grant along with £10,000 in donations to fund the project. It was officially unveiled by HRH The Duke of Gloucester on Saturday 2nd June 2007 at The War Memorial along with relatives of Ben Gimbert, Jim Nightall and Frank Bridges attending. This was followed by a Street Parade to St. Andrew's Church and Service of Dedication by the Vicar of Soham, The Reverend Tim Alban Jones MBE. There was also a 1940's themed Free Street Party on the Recreation Ground, Fountain Lane which included a Classic Vehicle Display, Free Children’s Activities, 1940’s Themed Stalls, Museum Exhibition in The Pavilion, Music by The Eel Pie Folk Band as well as free food and refreshments.

Donna Martin, chairman of Soham Community History Museum, said: "This is something that the people of the town have wanted since 1944. We wanted to do something to raise the profile of what happened and to do something for those brave men. If they had not done what they did, Soham would not be here. These men knew they would probably die."

East Cambridgeshire District Council gave full planning permission for the artwork and Cambridge stonemasons Ivett & Reed created the monument, crafted from Portland stone and topped with a bronze plaque, along with reproductions of newly discovered photos of the disaster. While generations of Soham children have learned of the men's heroism at school, wartime restrictions preventing newspaper and radio reports from naming the town limited the disaster's impact on the national consciousness. Mrs Martin said: "This is a hugely positive thing for Soham. We wanted something for the whole town, for tourists, for the children who learn about it - something tangible for them to see. The disaster had massive national significance - the railway line was one of the main lines of communication in preparation for the D-Day landings." She praised the help given by Ivett & Reed, the Royal British Legion in Soham, the Cambridgeshire Collection and JK Memorials, as well as thanking everyone in the town who has supported the project.

	Soham On The Home Front - Programme 02/06/2007 Microsoft Word 97-2003 .doc Format (970Kb)
	Soham On The Home Front - Programme 02/06/2007 Adobe Acrobat .pdf Format (1.26Mb)

THE 2ND JUNE 1944 TRAIN EXPLOSION

£6.50