The title of this book will probably be very familiar to civil engineers working within the railway sector, as it is still regarded as a classic of its type. It is by no means a new book; in fact, it was first published in 1955, and was reprinted both in 1960 and 1966. The author died in 1974, but an updated version of the book was published in 1982, with the account of individual accidents extended to the end of the early 1980s by Geoffrey Kitchenside. I have a yellowing paperback copy of this 1982 edition at home on my bookshelves, as this was required reading for young railway engineers when starting out in the industry as I was at the time. Curiously, however, this 2007 version of the book, published by Sutton Publishing, is actually a reprint of the 1966 issue, thus presenting the book exactly as the author himself concluded it. It therefore contains details of major railway accidents from the early days of the railways development in the 1830's, through to the Lewisham disaster of December 1957, still within the steam era.
Although the subtitle of the book, ‘The Classic History of British Railway Disasters’ might conjure up macabre images, in his preface Rolt is careful to point out that the main purpose of the book is not to sensationalise; but rather to use the disasters described to illustrate the way in which the present (1950s) high standards of railway safety have developed, using lessons learned from these tragedies. He draws heavily on the records of the then Ministry of Transport's Railways Inspection Department, rather than press reports or other second-hand accounts; so the conclusions he draws have an air of authority and authenticity.
The chapters group the accidents into a number of different categories: single line and double line collisions; blow-ups (of steam boilers); permanent way faults; runaway locomotives and stray wagons; high speed derailments; signalmen's and drivers' errors; and, perhaps of most interest to civil engineers, ‘Bridge failures – storm and tempest’ (chapter 4). In this chapter, nine weather-related disasters are described between the Dee Bridge collapse of January 1846 and an accident in a blizzard at Elliott Junction in December 1906, including a comprehensive and fascinating nine-page account of the notorious Tay Bridge disaster on the night of 28 December 1879.
Although the book is probably one of the most thorough expositions of such disasters within railway literature, it must be remembered that it was first written over 50 years ago–so when the author refers to ‘the seventies’, he means the 1870s! To the younger reader of today, the book may now seem quite antiquated, and the style of writing might seem somewhat quaint; and it is puzzling why Kitchenside's addendum (or an even more up-to-date version) was not included in this reprint, to give it a more contemporary feel. Of course, sadly, disasters have continued to occur on the UK's railways since the 1950s, so the interested reader must look elsewhere for accounts of such calamities. Nevertheless, Rolt's classic is still recommended reading for the modern railway engineer, as implementation of the lessons learned from the earlier disasters he describes have undoubtedly contributed to the much safer railway we know today.
