THE RAILWAY DETECTIVES

摘要

Collisions, derailments, fatalities. For more than 170 years, the rail industry and its regulators have worked to find out why such things happen and what can be done to stop them happening again. In the very earliest days of railways, all fatal accidents were inquired into by a coroner's jury, which could bring a verdict of manslaughter against those it held responsible. The problem was that those '12 good men and true' invariably lacked the expertise to pass judgment on technical matters so when, in 1840, the Railways Inspectorate (RI) was established, its inspectors recruited from the Corps of Royal Engineers. Although the RI initially had no remit to investigate accidents, it did so anyway - a function that became official in 1871. After that date, efforts increased to help guide the industry towards the adoption of interlocked points and signals, absolute block working and continuous brakes. Later would come the development of train protection systems and automated level crossings.