The 1996 Stafford rail crash occurred on 8 March 1996 when a Transrail freight train travelling from Mossend, North Lanarkshire, to Willesden, North London, derailed after an axle on a wagon carrying liquid carbon dioxide failed due to fatigue at Rickerscote south of Stafford on the West Coast Main Line. Almost immediately after the derailment, a Travelling Post Office mail train hauled by a Rail Express Systems British Rail Class 86 electric locomotive (no 86239) collided with a section of the derailed freight train on the adjacent line and fouled the path of the TPO mail train. One person, a mail sorter, was killed in the crash and twenty others including the driver of the mail train were injured.
