In the dark of an ill-fated September night, a train returning from a Kingston to Montego Bay excursion, with 1,600 souls aboard, derailed at a sleepy village called Kendal in Manchester, killing an estimated 200 people and injuring between 400 and 700 others.

The tragic event, which took place on September 1, 1957, made world headlines and is remembered today as the Kendal Crash.

In its account of the tragedy, Jamaica National Heritage Trust described it as “the worst railway disaster in Jamaica’s history” and the “second worst rail disaster in the world at the time”. Many of the dead could scarcely be picked from the horrifying carnage.

“Human bodies were piled high, stacked like cordwood in a Manchester schoolyard. There were bits and pieces of limbs everywhere,” recalled late journalist John Maxwell, whose Public Opinion news story for the British Evening News scooped the world.

The mangled corpses were buried in a mass grave near the crash site. Over the years a plan evolved to build a monument to the Kendal dead, bearing 177 names, as part of a memorial park at the site, at the same time to serve as a potentially lucrative attraction for visitors.

We hear the cry of Local Government and Community Development Minister Desmond McKenzie who was quoted in our Monday edition as adding his voice to the now annual call for the monument to be erected. Mr McKenzie is also the Member of Parliament for Kingston Western where the large majority of the Kendal dead resided. As a child he knew some of the people who went on that St Anne’s Roman Catholic Church excursion and recalls how the community was traumatised by the disaster.

“I don’t know if there is a sign anywhere to say that ‘at this location’. I don’t know if there is anything that says how many people died. These are important parts of our history, because it speaks to how we were operating as a country,” bemoaned Mr McKenzie.

The tragedy is also significant because Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport Minister Olivia “Babsy” Grange, who is also from Western Kingston, as an 11-year-old might have been among those lost, had her mother not been detained making dresses for many of those who were to be on the trip and ran out of time to prepare.

The big mystery is why two powerful government ministers and a plethora of organisations working on the monument cannot bring it to pass.

In 2017, a decision was finally made to declare September 1 as Kendal Crash Day, but nothing else since.

“Every year, every mayor, every councillor, every member of the municipal corporation… as well as the wider society, has been advocating for this — a proper museum for this world event that took place down here. This is long overdue and it is very embarrassing…” chairman of Manchester Parish Development Committee Mr Anthony Freckleton complained.

The Manchester Municipal Corporation, Jamaica Railway Corporation, Windalco, and an unnamed non-profit entity were all said to be part of the project under a memorial committee chaired by Mrs Angela Edwards. The monument was included in the Jamaica 60 Jubilee projects last year, but quietly fell off the agenda. That is all a great mystery.

The ghosts of Kendal must be wailing, “We’re tired of waiting.”