At 100 mph a passenger train has got no chance of dodging out of danger like a car; what is more, if it does hit something there are about 500 tons of metal and people flying about. And yet in the compartment of a British passenger train you are, statistically, nearly 200 times safer than in your car.
Clayton Tunnel in 1861, Armagh in 1889, Quintinshill in 1915, Norton Fitzwarren in 1940, Lewisham in 1957... this film is the story of the accidents that have most changed the system.
Using the few remaining steam trains, the film re-creates the circumstances of those accidents and then follows through the way in which the system has improved. It's a history of the way our modern technical wizardry is founded on the principles so dearly bought with the lives of earlier travellers.