The Armagh rail disaster happened on 12 June 1889 near Armagh, County Armagh, in Ireland, when a crowded Sunday school excursion train had to negotiate a steep incline; the steam locomotive was unable to complete the climb and the train stalled. The train crew decided to divide the train and take forward the front portion, leaving the rear portion on the running line. The rear portion was inadequately braked and ran back down the gradient, colliding with a following train. Eighty people were killed and 260 were injured, about a third of them children. It was the worst rail disaster in the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century, and to this day remains the worst railway disaster in Irish history. It is the fourth worst railway accident in the history of the post-independence United Kingdom. At the time, the disaster led directly to various safety measures becoming legal requirements for railways in the United Kingdom. This was important both for the measures introduced and for the move away from voluntarism and towards more direct state intervention in such matters. Circumstances of the accident The excursion sets out Armagh Methodist Sunday School had organised a day trip to the seaside resort of Warrenpoint, County Down, a distance of about . A special Great Northern Railway of Ireland (GNR(I)) train was arranged for the journey, intended to carry about eight hundred passengers. The railway route was steeply graded and curved, and the first from Armagh railway station involved a steep continuous climb, up a gradient of 1 in 82 (1.22%) and then 1 in 75 (1.33%). Elsewhere on the line, there were gradients as severe as 1 in 70.2 (1.42%). Asked to provide rolling stock for a special train to take 800 excursionists, the locomotive department at Dundalk sent fifteen vehicles hauled by a 'four-coupled' (2-4-0) locomotive; however, the instructions to the engine driver, Thomas McGrath, were that the train was to be of thirteen vehicles. There were more intending passengers than anticipated and, to accommodate the excursion, the Armagh station master decided to use all fifteen vehicles. McGrath, who had never driven the route before (but had been over it with excursion trains when a fireman), objected to these instructions, saying that his instructions were that the train was to be of thirteen vehicles at most. According to the driver: Two other witnesses said that McGrath had asked for a second