The Rob Roy railway disaster

A large format albumen print showing the derailed Rob Roy, a Great Western Railway locomotive. On 5 November 1868 it crashed into the back of a cattle truck at Awse Junction near Newnham in Gloucestershire.

The bearded man in the top hat in the lower left-hand corner is the GWR's chief engineer William George Owen (1811-1885). The man in the top hat standing next to the smoke stack is his son, William Lancaster Owen (1843-1911), who in 1885 succeeded his father as the GWR's Chief Engineer for Construction.

Photographed by Richard H. Barrett of Gloucester.