Accidents are shocks to any system, and railways are no exception. Britain’s rail network is among the safest, but the current world of risk mitigation and management is part of a journey that started long ago.
Early incidents like the felling of William Huskisson MP by Stephenson’s Rocket (1830) showed how new ideas could bring new dangers, yet from disaster came new safety measures, and within 50 years better signalling and braking methods had been made mandatory. The twentieth century would see further advances in rolling stock, track design and train protection systems, as accident led to action.Greg Morse charts these changes through the events that helped create them, including the Armagh train fire (1889), the Harrow & Wealdstone collision (1952) and the derailment at Hither Green (1967). He ends with a railway that was beginning to see the dawn of a new ‘golden age’, but for which the tragedy at Clapham Junction (1988) was a stark reminder that accidents always have more than one cause.
Reviews
The text is a pleasure to read. It literally "tells the story" of how railway safety evolved...This book is highly recommended.The Ffestiniog Railway Society
The gruesome subject of train crashes never ceases to fascinate and it is important that publishers continue to keep the topic in the public eye in order to educate new readers into the importance of maintaining a safe railway. Greg Morse is a rail industry professional who will be well known to RM readers as a writer of safety-related articles and in this small but informative book, he provides a brief overview of some of the worst crashes in British history.
The Railway Magazine
