Terror in the Tunnels: Britain’s Dangerous Railway History

by Rosa Matheson

The exciting early days of the railways were tempered with danger, as the Victorian concept of health and safety was rather different to ours. Going ‘into the dark’ was a frightening experience and tunneling under the ground and under water was a death-defying activity in nineteenth-century Britain – many workers and travellers paid the ultimate price. Flooding, collapses and explosions, as well as malodorous air and illness, were just some of the challenges workers faced in order to make tunnels passable. Even once the tunnels had been completed, accidents were still frequent, whether collisions, derailments or fires. In this fascinating history, Rosa Matheson explores the grim past of Britain’s well-known and lesser-known railway tunnel disasters, and how their ‘terror’ led to a safer future.

Genres: History, Railways, Nonfiction, Travel, Trains

192 pages, Paperback

Published May 2, 2017

Reviews

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

Picked this up cheap in a discount bookshop. The author relies heavily on contemporary reports of accidents in railway tunnels, mostly during their construction. Often with very little input from herself. Many of the stories are just left hanging; when we want to know about the outcome of the investigation they just end which is very unsatisfactory. Towards the end reading accounts of the multiple ways workers died got a bit boring, they are pretty much all the same whether they fell to their deaths, were crushed, blown up, burnt or drowned. The conclusion of the investigations was nearly always the same as well "accidental death" despite the total (what would now be criminal) negligence of the mining companies or the employees themselves. The sad thing about the book is all the pointless waste of life for tunnels which now lie abandoned or filled in after the golden age of the railways ended with the Beeching report.

[Louise Duckworth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too much detail and the wrong kind of detail. started to get bored by it.

[Monika · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.75* actually. For trains and train tunnels 'fanatics' and historians. Full of gruesome facts.