The signal box
Essays on signalling, stations and lines: how trains were kept apart, the accidents that changed the rules and the railways of the Balkans.
- The narrow-gauge line to the Rila mountains
A line only 760 millimetres wide climbs from the Maritsa valley to the highest railway station in the Balkans.
- Sofia on the road to Constantinople
For decades the main line to Constantinople had gaps, and the diplomatic quarrels that delayed it were as hard as the engineering.
- Armagh and the block system
In 1889 a runaway carriage accident killed eighty people and led to a law requiring safe signalling and brakes.
- The first railway in Bulgaria
In 1866 a line from the Danube to the Black Sea opened, built by British engineers for the Ottoman government.