Bee Gee singer Robin Gibb was a passenger on a Heather Green train which crashed in South East London, England killing 49 people and injuring 78. Robin suffered no serious physical injuries and helped injured passengers from the car for three hours, but nevertheless was taken to a nearby hospital in a state of shock.
The Sunday evening express train from Hastings to London derailed shortly before the train crossed the St. Mildred’s Road railway bridge, between Hither Green and Grove Park railway stations. Most of the carriages overturned, two of them having their sides torn off. Gibb, and his fiancée Molly Hullis, were returning from visiting her parents in Hastings. Gibb recalled “the carriage rolled over and big stretches of railway line came crashing in straight past my face.” At the time he was only 17, but the Bee Gees had already had their first big international hit earlier that year with “New York Mining Disaster 1941.” He reflected: ‘If our hits were not making so much money, I would not have been able to buy first-class tickets. Most of the people who died were in the second class compartments, which had no corridor to protect them’
Recovering immediately after the crash, Gibb wrote the song “Really and Sincerely.” “It doesn’t mention anything about a train crash but it does reflect the mood I was in.” (quotes from “The Bee Gees: Tales of the Brothers Gibb” by Andrew Hughes). Later in 1967, The Bee Gees played in Lewisham at a charity show in aid of the Hither Green train disaster fund.
