In 1906, the night-mail to Edinburgh steamed at full speed through Grantham station, where it had been expected to stop, and derailed at a bend and junction a few hundred yards farther north, killing everyone on board. It was, and remains, unclear what happened – a Board of Trade inquiry concluded that ‘the primary cause of this accident must for ever remain a mystery’.

It is here that this chilling true story enters the realms of macabre folklore. A signalman stated that he had seen the driver and signalman standing in their usual positions and staring straight ahead as though nothing was wrong. Another witness claimed to have seen them fighting. Others concluded that the driver must have been drunk, or had suddenly been taken ill, all of which had small amounts of circumstantial evidence to support them.

Has this mystery essentially become a folk tale? In any case, it is discussed in Stephen Wade, The A-Z of Curious Lincolnshire (2011) and Adrian Gray, Tales of Old Lincolnshire (1990), among other places.

Words by RORY WATERMAN