Edward Marston

Shrewsbury, 1866. Julian Lockyer is an imposing gentleman in his late fifties. Having reserved a room for the night at the Station Hotel, he asks to be called early in the morning because he has a train to catch.

April, 1867. A train departs King's Cross station bound for Lincoln. Among the passengers is a man attired in the garb of one in high ecclesiastical office.

When the engines finally met, there was a deafening clash and the Brighton Express twisted and buckled, tipping its carriages on to the other line. It was a scene of utter devastation....

A man’s body is found mutilated in Savernake Forest and the residents of Bedwyn sleep uneasy at night, fearing a monster. When Ralph Delchard and Gervase Bret arrive, they discover that the locals are harbouring dark secrets and that the real killer may be closer to home....

On the shocking discovery of a passenger's body on the Great Western Railway excursion train, Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck and his assistant, Sergeant Victor Leeming, are dispatched to the scene....

Derby Day at Epsom Downs and a multitude of people crowd to watch the races: dukes and dustmen, bishops and beggars, privileged ladies and prostitutes....

Guy Fawkes Night, 1857. Joel Heygate is the popular stationmaster at Exeter St David's railway station - an impressive figure of a man replete with frock coat and top hat, bushy eyebrows and walrus moustache....

December 1860. Headed for the morning shift at the Swindon Locomotive Works is an army of men pouring out of terraced houses built by the GWR, a miniature town and planned community that aims to provide for its employees from cradle to grave....

New York, 1908. Private detectives George Dillman and Genevieve Masefield plan to take a break from work upon the Cunard Line’s fleet with the offer of employment upon the Minnesota, a freighter and passenger vessel, which is bound for the Far East.

September 1907. George Dillman sets sail from Liverpool to New York on the Lusitania's maiden voyage. Posing as a passenger, Dillman is in fact an undercover detective hired by the Cunard Line to keep an eye out for petty crimes....

The Railway Detective faces his most dangerous adversary yet. It is 1852, and Inspector Robert Colbeck and his assistant Sergeant Victor Leeming are faced with their most complex and difficult case to date....

London, 1851. With the opening of the Great Exhibition at hand, interest in mounting in the engineering triumphs of the railways, but not everyone feels like celebrating....

Young Imogen Burnhope and her maid Rhoda board a non-stop train to Oxford to visit her Aunt Cassandra, who waits on the platform at Oxford station where the train terminates, to greet them. Only they never arrive....

Yorkshire 1855. When Colonel Aubrey Tarleton walks into the path of a speeding train....

An exquisite silver coffee-pot in the shape of a locomotive is on its way to Cardiff....

Spring, 1858. The route of the Caledonian Railway through the southern uplands of the Scottish countryside is disrupted by a fatal crash....

1860, Wimborne, Dorset. Rebecca Tullidge, miserably married to her callous husband, is having an affair. Much to her distress, she trips over her lover's dead body on the railway tracks....

The ordered calm of Gloucester Abbey is shattered by the murder of one of the monks....

The year is 1855, and on the LNWR train to London, a criminal is being escorted to his appointment with the hangman....

The audience was merry indeed when a third devilish imp bounded onstage to join the two that had been written into the script. But backstage all was uproar....