Early in the morning of 22nd September 1920, two goods trains collided at Trent Junction. One train was running from Derby to Nottingham on the outside right line. The other was heading from Leicester to Nottingham on the platform line and they crashed where these lines crossed. There were no injuries, but several wagons were derailed and passenger trains between Trent and Long Eaton junction had to run on a single line until the line was cleared later that morning.
On 25th March 1922 a porter was on a light engine, helping to deliver stores to the signal boxes around Trent Station. As the engine stopped at the Sheet Stores box, he got down on the near side and was knocked down and killed by the 1.15pm Manchester to London express. The porter – Frances Henry Wiggins – was 18 and the eldest of seven children, living on Victoria Road (now called Lawrence Street), Long Eaton with their parents. Frances had started as a signal lamp man, but had recently been promoted (porters did all sorts of different jobs).
In the early morning of 3rd July 1925 William Townsend, 36, a platelayer was killed near Trent Station. He was cycling to work on the staff path along the railway, past the gasworks, when he was knocked down by a passenger train from Castle Donington to Trent. The engine driver – Edgar Horton of Wellington Street, Long Eaton – said it was the first time he’d some someone cycling on the path and blew his whistle as he came around the bend. He saw the cyclist wobble and then fall onto the track. It wasn’t clear if he’d been startled by the whistle, or if his pedal had caught in the ballast. At the inquest a railway official said that staff were allowed to walk beside the railway, but that cycling was forbidden. Townsend lived at 56 Hey Street, New Sawley and left a widow and four children. The accident was like that involving John Allen 25 years earlier. He was also on his way to work from Hey Street and was killed by train approaching from the same direction a few hundred yards further back.
On the evening of Friday 22nd November 1929, a mailbag containing parcels was stolen from a guard’s van at Trent Station. The burnt remains were found in an allotment hut on Saturday morning.