The Tottenham Station Railway Disaster of 1860

Use of the passive voice gives it a different rhythm. Contemporary "best practice" is to avoid writing in passive voice. What I find interesting is that using active voice for inanimate objects like brickwork and walls and carriages, seems a bit anthropomorphic or perhaps animistic. Sure, "the wall fell" but not by its own volition.

Yet, for me the passive voice in this passage bogs down a bit in the final phrasing as subordinate clauses convolute as multiple inanimates suffer external effects. But in the end, the use of passive voice allows "great injury" to be the subject of the first sentence and empowers the paragraph in a way that "The engine" as subject simply cannot.

TL;DR

There was a defect in a tire that when subject to wear failed catastrophically causing the front axle to derail when braking prior to entering the station. The train was braking later than the textbook safe distance and was not configured for ideal braking performance. The derailed axle hit some of the track infrastructure causing the locomotive to jump the tracks and hit the platform while the rest of the trail piled on the back.

Just like every other "disaster" it's a bunch of otherwise inconsequential actions, bad luck, an operating procedure that doesn't account for day to day reality and a little bit of corner cutting coming together at the same time.

Forged steel, vs the cast steel/iron of the wheels themselves. They are heated and press fit on the wheels, and the cooling shrinks them onto the wheel. This is usually semi-permanant, with replacements only from wear against the rails. The cast iron would be too brittle and crack. In this case I would assume there was a casting defect in the wheel, which broke within the 'tyre'. Wagon wheel tyres are made in a similar way, but use wood spoked centers.

Still do. The ICE derailment at Eschede, for example, started with a tyre peeling off a wheel at speed.

you forgot the part where the author is trying to flog their new romance novel, available now on Amazon for the low price of $2.48