High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Abbots Ripton rail disaster occurred on 21 January 1876 at Abbots Ripton, then in the county of Huntingdonshire, England, now in Cambridgeshire, on the Great Northern Railway main line, previously thought to be exemplary for railway safety. In the accident, the Special Scotch Express (known informally to railway workers as `the Scotchman` although not officially the Flying Scotsman until after 1923) train from Edinburgh to London was involved in a collision, during a blizzard, with a coal train. An express travelling in the other direction then ran into the wreckage. The initial accident was caused by: