What was the name of the 1865 railway accident that Charles Dickens survived?

What was the name of the 1865 railway accident that Charles Dickens survived? The answer is the Staplehurst rail crash. On 9 June 1865, a South Eastern Railway boat train derailed at Staplehurst in Kent after running onto a viaduct where track had been removed during engineering work.

Ten passengers died and about forty were injured. Dickens was travelling in a first-class carriage with Ellen Ternan and her mother, Frances. Their carriage came to rest at an angle above the dry riverbed rather than falling completely, allowing all three to survive. Dickens climbed through a window, helped other passengers, and used his flask and hat to carry brandy and water to the injured.

Before leaving, he returned to the wreckage to retrieve the manuscript of the latest instalment of Our Mutual Friend. The experience left him deeply shaken. He became nervous about rail travel and later wrote about the accident in the novel’s postscript, describing the fictional Boffins as being with him during the disaster.

The crash also exposed serious weaknesses in railway worksite safety, including inadequate warning distance and a timetable error involving the tidal train.