YOU are young, said the judge to the eight men in the dock. "When you have served your sentences you will have the world before you. I can only hope that afterwards you will be able to lead useful and happy lives."

They had been found guilty of causing the most notorious incident of the Great Strike 80 years ago this week - they tried to derail the Flying Scotsman on the East Coast Mainline.

"Narrow escape from disaster of crowded train," said The Northern Echo's headline of May 11, 1926. The story said incredulously: "It appears to have been a deliberate attempt to wreck the train."

There had been a union meeting at West Colliery, Cramlington, on the morning of the incident. The miners who led the General Strike - "not a minute on the day, not a penny off the pay" was their slogan - were unhappy that mainline trains were still running, crewed by blacklegs.

Some of them determined to do something about it. They gathered railside, and stoned an inspector who was checking the track. He fled northwards, and warned the approaching 10am Edinburgh to King's Cross express - 15 coaches pulled by the Flying Scotsman (a new engine, only in service for three years and not yet famous for her speed).

"It is stated that the passengers on the train were warned to pull down the blinds...as a protection against stone throwing," said the Echo. The train halved its speed from 40mph.

But it was worse that stone-throwing. The strikers had removed the bolts and fishplates which held a section of the track in place.

The driver, who had volunteered to break the strike, saw the wonky rail and braked - but couldn't stop.

The Scotsman ploughed 60 yards before toppling off the tracks into a signal cabin. "It left the metals and overturned," said the Echo. "The engine was damaged and the goods cars wrecked, and only the fact that the passenger coaches were not attached direct to the tender prevented serious injury and probably loss of life."

One man - Arthur Hamilton, a Government official from London - "was crushed in a partially wrecked coach". The rest of the 270 passengers were harmed only by a large crowd of women and men which jeered them roundly as they stood lineside waiting for buses and taxis to take them onto Newcastle.

The General Strike collapsed a couple of days after the derailment. The police investigated, initially met by a wall of silence, but once they charged one miner with with-holding information, others began talking.

The eight who appeared in court a month-and-a-half later claimed that they were just bit-part players. They said those who were giving evidence against them were the ringleaders, saving their skins by sacrificing others.

Justice Wright, who stood unsuccessfully as a Liberal Parliamentary candidate for Darlington, accepted that more than the eight had been involved, but he said it was only good fortune which had prevented fatalities and "many serious maimings and disablements for life".

He told the defendants who were aged between 21 and 27: "How young men like you, well behaved and respectable, could carry out so nefarious a scheme is beyond my comprehension."

Three were sentenced to eight years' penal servitude, two got six and three got four - sentences so harsh that their womenfolk passed out in the gallery.

It is an old joke that this was the last mainline express train to stop at Cramlington.

Published: 13/05/2006