Though trains are one of the safest forms of transport, train accidents always make headline news. Their history is, in many ways, the history of technological development and learning. Early incidents like the felling of William Huskisson MP by Stephenson's Rocket in 1830 led to the reporting systems we know today, while within 50 years safer signalling and braking methods had been made mandatory. Greg Morse charts these changes, taking the story on through the twentieth century, which saw advances in track design and train protection systems, but which ended with a stark reminder that accidents always have more than one cause.