Britain's Railway Disasters

by Robin Jones

This is the story of how Britain’s railway disasters, horrific though they may be, change the network for the better through the crucial lessons that are learned.

It starts with fatalities on early mining tramways before the dawn of the steam age and takes the story up to the present day. While many of Britain’s worst tragedies are covered in depth, such as Quintinshill in 1915 and Harrow & Wealdstone in 1952, the book also looks at others that had resounding consequences for safety.

Robin Jones is a widely published and highly respected journalist who specialises in heritage transportation and industrial archaeology subjects.
Robin contributes news and feature material on a regular basis across a wide range of railway titles and has written many books on Britain’s railway history. He is currently the editor of Heritage Railway Magazine.

Genres: Nonfiction

267 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 18, 2016

Reviews

[Katia M. Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really interesting and sobering read. It is arranged chronologically and filled with illustrations and focus points in separate boxes to the textual commentary. The descriptions and analysis is quite in depth,with a look at the background to accidents, the incidents themselves, eye witness accounts, investigations and outcomes.

The biggest thing I took away from this was the vast array of similarities between accidents whether they occurred in the 1800s, 1900s, or 2000s. I suppose there are only so many things that can go wrong on a fixed system, however, it was astonishing to me that it often took several incidents of the same type before serious changes were made to safety materials and guidelines.

Of particular interest to me was the Moorgate accident. If it had been investigated now, it would probably have been put down to a loss of situational awareness by the driver, but back in the 1970s, very little was known about this issue affecting people such as pilots, train drivers, long haul truck drivers etc., and it was sad to see how belligerently the investigators went after the dead driver.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of trains, accidents, accident investigation and reporting. A sad, but good read.

[Steve Maxwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

By no means is this an exhaustive look at the railway accidents and disasters on the British rail system. It does, however, look at some of the disasters that have led to the biggest changes in safeworking procedures.

While there is some railway terminology in the book, it is easily understood by the layperson. A very informative read and several times had me thinking about Australia's worst rail disaster at Granville, Sydney, in 1977.

[Harriet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative book, though I found the writing style tough going at times