The Railway Policeman's Casebook

Richard Stacpoole-Ryding looks back on the history of crime on Britain's railways.

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The opportunity to commit crime on the railways began from the day they were being built. The crimes both mirrored the range of those committed outside and existed in a microcosm of their own. It was the work of the various railway company police forces and predecessor forces to investigate and bring to justice the perpetrators. This book takes us back from the very early days of railway policing to the halcyon days of the 1940s to the 1980s when policing methods, image and perception were reflected in television series such as Dixon of Dock Green, Z Cars and The Bill. The cases in the book are authentic and reported by investigating officers from the age of steam locomotives, stations, goods yards, left luggage offices and dining cars, and those nostalgic images of railways. They bring to life the devious and clever methods devised by criminals to obtain success in their activities and how they were thwarted by the railway policeman.

Here, then, is a fascinating and diverse collection of cases from a past era that were committed in a unique environment and solved by a body of dedicated and highly trained officers of the railway police.