Red for Danger
RSSB’s Greg Morse explains why L. T. C. Rolt’s classic book is still important.
Soon after joining the railway, I met a man who handed me a copy of Red for Danger by L. T. C. Rolt. He knew he was pushing on an open door, but it ignited an interest in the history of train accidents, what was done about them, and what we need to keep remembering. Whenever I speak at a safety event, I always recommend it.
When the book was first published in 1955, one reviewer called it an ‘intensely human story’, and it’s this link to real people that makes it so important – when we care, we’re more likely to remember. Not that Rolt resorted to vivid descriptions of death and devastation; nor does he put words into the mouths of those involved.
In the story of the collision at Norton Fitzwarren in 1890, for example, the fireman, Albert Dowling, warns his driver that there is ‘a train a-coming on our line and he is never going to stop’. The signaller at Hawes Junction in 1910, Alfred Sutton, realises the full horror of his mistake and tells a driver to inform the station master that ‘I am afraid I have wrecked the Scotch express’. And the driver injured at Castle Cary in 1937, D. Macaulay, when scolded for suggesting another signaller had erred, sadly shrugs ‘all right, all right: there’s no use getting angry about it’. All these phrases appear in the original inquiry reports. Rolt’s skill is that he then adds more human colour, as in the case of Macaulay, who is described with simple tenderness as limping away after delivering his line.
Elsewhere, the language conveys fear, terror, appalling weather conditions, Rolt bringing an almost artistic eye to each scene. At the opening of his description of the double collision at Abbots Ripton in January 1876, for instance, the
reader is asked to ‘imagine a heavy coal train of thirty-seven wagons rumbling slowly southwards from Peterborough’. In its cab, driver and fireman peer for signals ‘through puckered eyes round the cab side sheets for the spectacle glasses were blinded with snow’. You can hear the rhythm of the wagons on the track joints, feel the burning cold of the whiteout as the engine’s fire roars in the firebox.
But Red for Danger isn’t just a set of stories, it’s also the grand narrative of safety’s evolution. So in the case of Abbots Ripton, Rolt also explains that the accident had been caused in part by a signal freezing in the clear position, despite the signaller setting it to danger to protect a train ahead. A couple of pages later, he explains how the accident therefore led to changes and improvements in signalling such that henceforth signals were held at danger until cleared for a specific train to pass. Today of course our preference is invariably to keep signals clear unless protecting the section ahead, but here was the beginnings of the fail-safe principle that underpins all railway operation.
We all need to know why things are the way they are. You might not opt for Red for Danger. You might prefer our RED safety videos, which increasingly includes corporate memory content, or one of the many safety podcasts out there. Find what works for you, but always share your discoveries. Talking to each other is always going to be the best way for safety to improve.
Get to know L. T. C. Rolt
Lionel Thomas Caswall (‘Tom’) Rolt was born in Chester in 1910. A student of Cheltenham College, he was an engineer by trade, but became known as a champion of canal and railway preservation, and a prolific, skilled writer. His first book (Narrow Boat, 1944) covered life on the inland waterways. Aside from Red for Danger, biographies on Brunel, Telford, and the Stephensons followed, along with various autobiographical works before his death in 1974.
