Princess Diana survived a terrifying train crash that left her bleeding from a head wound two decades before the Paris collision that killed her – an ordeal RadarOnline.com can reveal is being described by those familiar with the episode as a tragic foreshadowing of her death.
Diana was 16 when the sleeper train carrying her and her younger brother Charles Spencer was struck at Glasgow Queen Street station on December 24, 1977.
Twenty-four people were injured in the collision, which happened weeks after Diana first met her future husband, then-Prince Charles, 29, who was dating her older sister Sarah.
One of Diana’s closest former friends claimed, “Looking back, there is something deeply haunting about what happened. Diana was a teenager traveling with her brother when, without warning, another vehicle crashed into theirs, and she was left injured and bleeding.
“Nobody could possibly have imagined what lay ahead, but with the knowledge of how Diana eventually died, it feels like a tragic foreshadowing. Almost 20 years later, another journey would end in a violent collision – only this time she would not come home.
“The circumstances were completely different, and there is no suggestion of any connection between the two events. It is simply an extraordinarily sad coincidence in the story of a life that ended far too young.”
Spencer, 62, reveals the childhood accident in his memoir Swan Song, recalling the journeys he and Diana made between their divorced parents’ homes.
He writes: “From 1972, when I was eight and Diana 10, the train journeys between our parents’ homes grew much longer. Peter and my mother bought Ardencaple, a beautiful, if rain-drenched, coastal farm on an island off the west coast of Scotland.”
Spencer and Diana’s mother, Frances, had left their father in 1967 for Peter Shand Kydd, heir to an Australian wallpaper fortune.
Ardencaple was on Seil, an island near Oban connected to mainland Scotland by a stone bridge.
Spencer writes: “Diana and I would take the overnight ‘sleeper’ train together from London to Scotland.
“Once we were in a crash, in one of Glasgow’s stations, which was serious enough to garner a mention on the BBC’s evening news. The wall mirror in our compartment shattered when another engine hit our stationary train at speed, and Diana received a nasty cut in her scalp that required stitches.”
A Department of Transport investigation recorded a serious collision at Queen Street that Christmas Eve involving the Royal Highlander sleeper service from London.
According to the report, a Class 40 diesel locomotive descended through Queen Street Tunnel out of control before entering the station at between 40 and 45 mph and violently striking the rear of the stationary passenger train.
The locomotive became embedded in the rear sleeping car, which was extensively damaged. Investigators concluded that the collision resulted from the locomotive’s brakes failing to control its speed on the steep descent into the station.
There were no fatalities even though 24 people were injured.
Four passengers, the locomotive driver and his assistant required hospital treatment and were discharged within hours.