Yorkshire Railway Disasters

Railway disasters were a new phenomenon in early Victorian England. One of the first to be investigated by the Railway Inspectorate was at Howden, a month after the Hull & Selby Railway opened, in which five people died in a derailment in 1840. Throughout the history of the railways, signalling and safety procedures have developed and the railways have become much safer but even in recent times, accidents have happened. Yorkshire, the largest historic county in England and encompassing densely populated towns and cities, heavily industrialised areas, remote rural areas and coastal settlements, has seen its fair share of railway disasters over the last two centuries, including several at Penistone in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the worst accident on Britain’s network in the 21st century at Great Heck. Richard Jones reveals the stories behind the railway accidents in Yorkshire from the early days of the railways in the 1840s to the 21st century.