The Hixon Railway Disaster

Cover Type: Hardcover
Book Condition: As New
Jacket Condition: As New
Publisher: Pen And Sword
Publisher Place: Uk
Publisher Year: 2017
Edition: First Edition

Description: 120 pages. Book and Jacket appear to have hardly been read and are both in As new condition throughout.

Publishers Description: This is the shocking true story behind the botched introduction of Automatic Half-Barrier level-crossings into Britain. January 1968 saw the convening of the first Parliamentary Court of Inquiry into a railway accident in Britain since the Tay Bridge Disaster nearly a century before. Why was this Because Britains Railway Detectives, the Railway Inspectorate, who would normally investigate all aspects of railway safety, were also in charge of the introduction of automatic Continental-style, level-crossings into this country. At Hixon in Staffordshire, one of these newly installed robot crossings on British Rails flagship Euston to Glasgow mainline, was the scene of a fatal high-speed collision between a packed express train and an enormous, heavily laden low-loader. For once, the Railway Detectives were the ones having to explain their actions, in the full glare of media attention, to an expectant and increasingly worried nation. (There was another awful, fatal collision at an automatic crossing at Beckingham, Lincolnshire, in April of 1968). Using previously undisclosed information, the author has been able to cast fresh light on to not only the Hixon Disaster, but also the extraordinary story of the largely successful attempts, by British Railways and the Railway Inspectorate of the time, to hide the truth of just how close we came to having dozens of Hixons right across the rail network.

ISBN: 9781473884434