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sammy_'s review against another edition
5.0
I picked up this book after losing myself down one too many late-night wiki-holes on train disasters. There was something about these disasters that kept drawing me in, which I hoped a book could perhaps explain for me.
Well Rolt’s book, despite being written in 1955, certainly did the job. Aside from being superbly researched (always all the more admirable when the author didn’t have the internet), it’s also insightful on the subject of the fascination we have with disasters of all kinds.
“The accident caused by fate alone is rare on the railway,” Rolt writes. “Almost invariably human fallibility is responsible. The cause is found to be trivial - a single mistake on the part of a driver, guard, or signalman - or some fatal lack of cooperation between them. It is in this contrast between trivial error and terrible consequence that the drama of the railway accident lies.”
The fact that this human fallibility is often the result of Victorian working conditions often makes the disasters only sadder, as, for example, in the case of one signalman who worked a 24-hour shift in order to have one full day off per week, or another forced to work immediately after the death of his child. The author highlights that public opinion of the time was often highly sympathetic in these cases, and even in other cases without such obvious justification for distraction, Rolt never harshly judges the main protagonists of each disaster, writing: “have we not all been equally careless and forgetful on occasion, but with no such fearful result?” In this vein, the author also uses each accident to narrate the gradual development of increasingly more sophisticated technological attempts to remove the element of human fallibility from railway operations.
In any case, it certainly left me glad not to be a Victorian signalman.
Well Rolt’s book, despite being written in 1955, certainly did the job. Aside from being superbly researched (always all the more admirable when the author didn’t have the internet), it’s also insightful on the subject of the fascination we have with disasters of all kinds.
“The accident caused by fate alone is rare on the railway,” Rolt writes. “Almost invariably human fallibility is responsible. The cause is found to be trivial - a single mistake on the part of a driver, guard, or signalman - or some fatal lack of cooperation between them. It is in this contrast between trivial error and terrible consequence that the drama of the railway accident lies.”
The fact that this human fallibility is often the result of Victorian working conditions often makes the disasters only sadder, as, for example, in the case of one signalman who worked a 24-hour shift in order to have one full day off per week, or another forced to work immediately after the death of his child. The author highlights that public opinion of the time was often highly sympathetic in these cases, and even in other cases without such obvious justification for distraction, Rolt never harshly judges the main protagonists of each disaster, writing: “have we not all been equally careless and forgetful on occasion, but with no such fearful result?” In this vein, the author also uses each accident to narrate the gradual development of increasingly more sophisticated technological attempts to remove the element of human fallibility from railway operations.
In any case, it certainly left me glad not to be a Victorian signalman.
solexine's review against another edition
5.0
Fascinating. I work in health and safety so find the subject matter enthralling . But don’t let that put you off! If you have even the slightest passing (loop) interest in trains, safety, social history or engineering then read this. Yes it was written in the 50s but this is still a relevant and comprehensive book on the subject.
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