A NORTH-EAST couple will travel to Scotland today on Friday to remember an ancestor who was one of only two army officers to survive Britain's worst-ever train crash.

Susan Hughes, of Northumberland, never met her grandfather Alex Wightman, who died two years before she born.

But his story has been partly researched by her husband, Canon Alan Hughes MBE, a former soldier himself, originally from Middlesbrough and chaplain for the Reserve Forces and Cadet Association at Old Elvet in Durham.

Mrs Hughes explained that her grandfather, Major Wightman, survival of the Gretna rail disaster, which involved five trains and killed more than 200 First World War soldiers from The Royal Scots bound for the Dardanelles, was part of family folklore.

Mr and Mrs Hughes will today join the Princess Royal, First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon and other relatives of involved in the tragedy at Quinitishill, near Gretna Green for a special service on the centenary of the disaster.

Five hundred men of the 7th Battalion The Royal Scots had boarded the train and 215 Royal Scots perished and 191 were injured. There was a total of 227 dead and 244 injured, including civilian passengers and crew.

Alex Wightman, then a captain, was ordered to continue his journey with the few survivors and board the ship Empress of Britain, bound for Gallipoli.

He was awarded the Military Cross for his action in Gallipoli for attempting to run telephone wires to captured trenches during the battle of Gully Ravine. He was wounded three times and was saved from certain death on the field by his pocketbook, which broke the force of a bullet.

Speaking of the Gretna disaster, Mrs Hughes, an artist currently based near Coldstream, said: "I was always acquainted with the rail disaster as a child, through family folklore.

"My grandmother was told by my grandfather that the scenes he witnessed that day were worse than any he later saw in battle.

"The crash was caused, it was then said, by a signalman’s blunder...I have no doubt that now other causes of the disaster will be aired. Sabotage, dangerously outdated wooden rolling stock lit by unsafe gas fittings, careless ordering of the driver to exceed safe limits to speed the hapless soldiers to embarkation ports. Risk assessments and duty of care were disciplines woefully absent in those dark days.

"The survivors were not allowed time to comfort injured comrades, grieve the dead nor attend their funerals.

"Instead Alex was ordered to continue his journey with the few survivors, to board the ship Empress of Britain bound for Gallipoli. During the voyage he volunteered to organise and train a new signals section, to replace the one wiped out in the disaster."