Bøker av Greg Morse

Clapham was a pivotal point in British railway history. Much technology had been invented and applied to accident prevention by 1988; much more was to come. The Clapham Train Accident considers Clapham in its wider context, using official reports and expert interviews to describe both the causes and the terrible effects. It looks beyond the railway to the external factors acting not only on British Rail, but also the government of the time, and considers the safety improvements that came about as a result.Finally, the book brings the story up to date and looks at why the lessons learned over thirty years ago still need to be retained in an industry where the baton of safety is all-too-easily dropped during reorganization, re-branding and after the departure of those who lived through darker days to make ours shine more brightly.The concatenation of events, the errors, the reorganizations, the financial constraints, that led to Clapham could happen to any business in any industry. On the morning of 12 December 1988, they happened to the railway.The Clapham Train Accident will act as a cautionary tale for safety practitioners old and new, not just in rail, but also other safety critical industries. It will help readers think actions through to all consequences, helping them too to make safer decisions, particularly when changing a system, technology or method of working.

After the Second World War, the drive for the modernization of Britain''s railways ushered in a new breed of locomotive: the Diesel. Diesel-powered trains had been around for some time, but faced with a coal crisis and the Clean Air Act in the 1950s, it was seen as a part of the solution for British Rail. This beautifully illustrated book, written by an expert on rail history, charts the rise and decline of Britain''s diesel-powered locomotives. It covers a period of great change and experimentation, where the iconic steam engines that had dominated for a century were replaced by a series of modern diesels including the ill-fated ''Westerns'' and the more successful ''Deltics''--iconic trains of the era.

Britain's rail network is now among the safest in the world, but the journey that brought it to that point has been long and eventful. Early incidents like the felling of William Huskisson MP by Stephenson's Rocket (1830) showed how new ideas could bring new dangers.

"John Betjeman".

Guides us through a world of Traveller's Fare, concrete concourses and peak-capped porters, a difficult period that began with the aftershock of Beeching but ended with BR becoming the first nationalised passenger network in the world to make a profit.