Trains knit together cities, markets, and memories, yet their power to connect carries a shadow. This book traces twenty-five of the deadliest or most revealing rail disasters of the last century, from colonial-era bridge collapses to modern high-speed collisions. Each chapter reads like a short thriller built entirely from fact: you meet the passengers and crew, follow the unnoticed errors, witness the crash, and walk through the investigation that follows. The narrative stays clear of jargon, explaining brake systems, signal logic, and structural failures in everyday language. Along the way, you discover how a single misaligned switch led two trains to meet head-on in Angola, why neglected hand brakes let a parked oil train roll downhill into a Canadian town, and how festival crowds in India never heard the horn that tried to save them. The collection also shows the positive aftershocks: safer tank cars, automatic warning systems, new laws, and cultural shifts inside rail companies. Packed with human detail and technical clarity, the book serves as both a memorial and a manual. It reminds readers that progress often arrives through sorrow and that remembering past mistakes is the surest way to prevent new ones.
