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 Britain's '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 Rail's 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.
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