On 2 September 1898 at Wellingborough railway station a postman brought a mailcart to the station with mail which he was to see onto a train due at 20:22. The mail should then have been brought to the down platform through a passageway (normally closed by a gate kept locked from the inside) between the station yard and the platform. The postman went into the station collected a luggage trolley and took it along the platform to the platform side of the gate. Whilst the platform itself sloped towards the railway tracks quite noticeably, the passageway did not. The postman put down the handle by which he was drawing the trolley and unlocked the gate.