UK: 1891 train entombed in snow for 2 days

[John Ashworth]

Weatherwatch: early spring blizzards

* Jeremy Plester
* The Guardian, Thursday 3 March 2011

Last December was something of a freak, but there may still be worse weather to come this winter if history repeats itself. The winter of 1890-1891 also began in late November with snow and ice, followed by record-breaking cold in December. By February though, conditions had turned so mild it felt as if spring had come early before an even bigger shock arrived on 9 March: a huge blizzard tore through England and Wales.

The storm raged for four days. The winds were so violent they blew down more than half a million trees and ripped the roofs off houses.

Several people froze to death outdoors and thousands of livestock perished. But the greatest casualties were at sea, where 65 ships were wrecked in the English Channel with the loss of some 220 lives, one of the worst maritime disasters of the century.

The snow fell so thick and fast that many trains were trapped for days in monstrous drifts. One of the most dramatic incidents was the "Zulu" express train that left London for Plymouth at 3pm on March 9. That evening it got stuck in a snowdrift on Dartmoor and rapidly became engulfed in snow.

The passengers and crew were entombed for two days before a farmer spotted the engine funnel sticking up from the snow, and it then took 300 navvies to dig out the train. It eventually arrived in Plymouth eight days late, something of a record even by today's standards.

[John Ashworth]

I'd never heard of a train named "Zulu", but the uk.railway newsgroup informs us:

Dates from 1879 (during the Zulu War) as a nickname for the 3pm
Paddington-Plymouth express.

As from 1880 it was attached to the 4.45pm Paddington-Birkenhead. Seems
to have been in use up till 1910 when the route via Bicester opened.

There's also a list of British named trains here which says:

The Zulu (Birkenhead - Paddington, unofficial name)

[Ian Roberts]

The Zulu in the snow drift was probably still broad (7') gauge at that date.
I used to travel on the Zulu Birkenhead to Paddington fairly regularly as far as Wellington (Salop) and I think it applied to the 1140 train only. The name was attributed to a Zulu king en route to London having disembarked from a ship at Liverpool, crossed the river to Birkenhead and taken the Great Western route to London with his retinue.
Ian Allan resurected the name in 1967 for one of a pair of commemorative trains at the in of the through service.