The year before he published "The Signalman," Charles Dickens survived a horrific train accident known as the Staplehurst Rail Crash.
On June 9, 1865, Dickens was traveling through Staplehurst, Kent in a first-class coach with his mistress and her mother. To warn the driver to stop before an upcoming section where the track had been removed for maintenance, a signal operator stood waving a red flag. Disaster struck because the operator stood only half a kilometer away when a whole kilometer was needed for the train to stop in time. The train derailed where the track ended, resulting in the deaths of ten and the injuries of forty. Dickens was in the only first-class carriage to be unharmed in the crash. He attended to other passengers who were injured, some of whom died in his arms.
Trauma from the accident stayed with Dickens. For two weeks following the crash he lost his voice, and he avoided train travel for the remaining years of his life. In an eerie coincidence, Dickens died on June 9, 1870, exactly five years after the crash.
