As a Massachusetts railroad commissioner, Adams investigated the Revere disaster of 1871 and the Wollaston crash of 1878, and here he gathers accounts of railway accidents from the death of William Huskisson in 1830 onward. He examines telescoping, telegraph errors, oil-tank fires and drawbridge plunges, and the safety devices that followed.
A lively, pioneering study of disaster and reform by a grandson of John Quincy Adams. Download the free EPUB.