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Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello Tim Harford here, and I have a special

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Speaker 1: start to the year for you. I've been sitting on

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Speaker 1: some great ideas for gripping cautionary tales. Their stories full

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Speaker 1: of exactly the kind of instructive downfalls and disasters I love,

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Speaker 1: but I've never quite found the right place to tell

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Speaker 1: them during our normal shows. They're cracking yarns that just

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Speaker 1: don't require a full episode to recount. That's why I

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Speaker 1: came up with Cautionary Tales shorts, and so far these

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Speaker 1: bite size stories have only been available to Pushkin Plus subscribers,

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Speaker 1: but I'm going to let you hear two of them here,

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Speaker 1: back to back. The first of our Cautionary Tales shorts

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Speaker 1: starts in another world, just another day in Azaoth. Some

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Speaker 1: citizens are enjoying themselves, indulging in the everyday activities that

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Speaker 1: Azarov has to for exploring, accepting quests, trading, hanging out

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Speaker 1: with their pet scorpids and octopodes, or getting into fights,

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Speaker 1: living their best lives in a fantasy kingdom. But for

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Speaker 1: the mighty heroes tough enough to enter the unexplored jungle

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Speaker 1: realm of zul Gurub, the expectation was that they would

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Speaker 1: leave a dream and enter a nightmare the domain of

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Speaker 1: the blood god Haka the Soul Fled. What am I

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Speaker 1: talking about? A computer game called World of Warcraft. But

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Speaker 1: on that particular day, September thirteenth, two thousand and five,

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Speaker 1: something was happening inside that computer game that was to

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Speaker 1: become strangely prophetic. The nightmare of Hakar the Soul Flayer

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Speaker 1: was not going to be confined to zul Gurub. I'm

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Speaker 1: Tim Harford, and you're listening to cautionary tales. World of

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Speaker 1: Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role playing game that

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Speaker 1: means hundreds of thousands of people are online at the

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Speaker 1: same time, able to interact with each other by talking, trading, brawling,

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Speaker 1: casting spells, or teaming up in epic battles. Stories in

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Speaker 1: World of Warcraft emerge from what the players do as

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Speaker 1: they interact together, acting to what the game throws at them.

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Speaker 1: In Warcraft, those players take on the role of fantastical characters,

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Speaker 1: such as crafty rogues, virtuous paladins, or a moral warlocks.

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Speaker 1: Players who play a lot have characters who leveled up,

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Speaker 1: becoming tougher and tougher, effectively becoming a mythical hero in

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Speaker 1: a world filled with mediocrities. Mythical heroes need worthy challenges,

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Speaker 1: and that is why from time to time, Blizzard Entertainment,

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Speaker 1: the company that produces World of Warcraft, adds new realms,

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Speaker 1: new quests, new and terrible foes, foes such as the

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Speaker 1: blood god hack Are, the soul player, who lurked deep

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Speaker 1: in the realm of Zulub. As soon as Blizzard Entertainment

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Speaker 1: rolled out the software update that created Zulgurub, curious players

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Speaker 1: naturally sent their characters in to have a look. Inexperienced

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Speaker 1: low level characters didn't stand a chance. Either they were

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Speaker 1: slain or they quickly retreated to safer regions. Zulgarub was

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Speaker 1: designed to be a tough challenge for high level characters.

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Speaker 1: The mightiest heroes in the world. Hakar, the soul Flayer,

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Speaker 1: could place a curse on people with the temerity to

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Speaker 1: confront him, a curse called corrupted blood. If your character

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Speaker 1: had corrupted blood, the game would depict a fountain of

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Speaker 1: gore spurting from them with a squelching sound, and their

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Speaker 1: health would start draining away. That could be fatal almost

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Speaker 1: immediately for low level characters, but for the high level

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Speaker 1: heroes fighting hack Are the soul Flayer. It was more

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Speaker 1: of an inconvenience. They could keep themselves alive while the

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Speaker 1: curse lasted. After a while, it expired. Oh and the

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Speaker 1: the thing about corrupted blood. It was contagious. It would

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Speaker 1: spread between allies from one character to another if they

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Speaker 1: didn't socially distance. Is this starting to ring any bells?

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Speaker 1: Diseases spread when their carriers move around. It could be

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Speaker 1: fleas on rats in the hold of a sailing ship

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Speaker 1: carrying the Black Death across the world, or infected air

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Speaker 1: passengers moving coronavirus around at the speed of an airliner.

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Speaker 1: In World of Warcraft, people move even faster they teleport.

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Speaker 1: Players of World of Warcraft don't pay their subscription fees

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Speaker 1: just so their characters can walk around for weeks on end,

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Speaker 1: and so the game allows characters to teleport instantly from

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Speaker 1: a dangerous area like Zulgudub to a safe, well populated city.

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Speaker 1: You can see where this is going. A powerful infected

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Speaker 1: character could blink out of a titanic struggle in the

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Speaker 1: heart of Zulgarub and reappear in the middle of a

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Speaker 1: densely populated city, spreading the curse. Blizzard Entertainment didn't want

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Speaker 1: that to happen. Corrupted Blood was supposed to be a

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Speaker 1: challenge only for those who chose to enter Zulgar Ub,

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Speaker 1: so Blizzards programmers included a line of code that would

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Speaker 1: automatically cancel the corrupted blood effect at the moment that

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Speaker 1: a character left the battle with Hackar. Except for some reason,

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Speaker 1: corrupted blood escaped from Zulgar Rub anyway. In Azarov's busy cities.

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Speaker 1: It spread to low level characters who would be dead

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Speaker 1: in a few seconds. It also spread to the computer

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Speaker 1: controlled characters that kept the game's economy running in the background.

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Speaker 1: These bot characters were nobody special market traders, innkeepers, priests,

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Speaker 1: or town guards, but in the cities these bots were

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Speaker 1: everywhere because it was the simplest way to keep the

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Speaker 1: game running smoothly. These computer characters were programmed to be

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Speaker 1: almost immortal, not a problem usually, but now it meant

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Speaker 1: that they could serve as asymptomatic carriers of the curse. Great.

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Speaker 1: Now you have these invulnerable extras strolling around in the

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Speaker 1: background of the game, serving drinks and snacks with a

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Speaker 1: side order of deadly corrupted blood. The stage was set

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Speaker 1: for the world's first virtual pandemic. It had started in

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Speaker 1: a remote corner of the world and spread to the cities.

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Speaker 1: With hindsight, it was all a little prescient. At Tufts

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Speaker 1: Universities Center for Modeling Infectious Diseases, Nina Fefferman's phone rang

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Speaker 1: It was a student of hers Eric Lofgren. Lofgren was

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Speaker 1: a keen World of Warcraft player, and he and Fefferman

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Speaker 1: had been talking about the game's potential as a research tool.

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Speaker 1: They weren't the only academics to be interested. Scientists and

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Speaker 1: social scientists were waking up to the possibility that these complex,

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Speaker 1: highly social games might be a terrific source of real

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Speaker 1: world insight. Economists, for example, we're asking could we study

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Speaker 1: inflation by deliberately flooding a virtual world with gold coins?

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Speaker 1: What would happen? How would people react? And epidemiologists like

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Speaker 1: Lofgren and Fefferman were wondering whether they could learn something

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Speaker 1: by persuading a gaming company to unleash a public health

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Speaker 1: emergency on a virtual world. Although Lofgren was on the

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Speaker 1: other end of the phone line, Fefferman could hear that

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Speaker 1: he was excited log into the game, said Lofgren. That

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Speaker 1: thing we were talking out it's happening. Corrupted blood was

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Speaker 1: spreading fast. Characters strong enough not to be killed instantly

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Speaker 1: would flee the plague infested cities, carrying the curse with them.

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Speaker 1: The computer bot characters would stroll around as their programming dictated,

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Speaker 1: looking innocent but spreading death, and some players, curious to

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Speaker 1: see what the fuss was about, sent their characters into

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Speaker 1: infected areas to have a look at the pools of

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Speaker 1: blood and the piles of virtual skeletons. The result was

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Speaker 1: that the curse spread with unimaginable speed. Early in the

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Speaker 1: stars CoV two pandemic, before the lockdowns, the number of

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Speaker 1: people infected doubled every two or three days. The number

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Speaker 1: of characters infected with corrupted blood doubled nine minutes. World

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Speaker 1: of Warcraft seems like one big game, but in practice,

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Speaker 1: for technical reasons, there are lots of parallel game servers,

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Speaker 1: each hosting a few thousand players. Outbreaks happened on different

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Speaker 1: game servers at different times. Whenever they did, it would

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Speaker 1: take mere hours before every vulnerable character on that server

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Speaker 1: was either dead or hiding somewhere very remote. The gaming

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Speaker 1: community was a buzz with the news what was going

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Speaker 1: on in the first server to be effected, iron Forge,

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Speaker 1: the Dwarf and capital was quick to succumb to the plague.

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Speaker 1: Surviving characters just saw piles of skeletons marking where countless

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Speaker 1: others had perished. The capital of the orcs Ogrimar fared

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Speaker 1: no better. Within hours, it was overrun. Players scrambled to

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Speaker 1: keep their characters out of harm's way. As the epidemiologists

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Speaker 1: Fefferman and Lofgren watched the virtual pandemic unfold, some of

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Speaker 1: what they saw surprised them. They were amazed to see

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Speaker 1: some characters rushing heroically towards the danger, casting healing spells

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Speaker 1: to try to stop the spread, even at the cost

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Speaker 1: of their own lives. Altruistic players were risking harm to

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Speaker 1: a character they had long cherished because they wanted to

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Speaker 1: do the right thing. That wasn't something you saw in

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Speaker 1: the epidemiological models. Another surprise was the appearance of what,

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Speaker 1: with hindsight, we might call play idiots, players who deliberately

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Speaker 1: contracted an infection and spread it around, or who accidentally

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Speaker 1: did so, first by recklessly running in to see what

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Speaker 1: the fuss was about and then by running away again.

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Speaker 1: Corrupted blood, after all, was like COVID fairly harmless to

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Speaker 1: some and deadly to others, and some people don't much

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Speaker 1: care about others. Misinformation circulated. Everyone seemed to be promoting

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Speaker 1: a cure. All the cures were snake oil and conspiracy

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Speaker 1: theories circulated too, as the players of the game tried

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Speaker 1: to figure out a question that has become all too familiar.

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Speaker 1: Did someone do this on purpose? Did the game's designers

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Speaker 1: think it would be fun to introduce an utterly deadly,

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Speaker 1: mind bendingly transmissible disease into their fantasy world? Was it

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Speaker 1: a disgruntled employee trying to sabotage the game? Maybe some

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Speaker 1: rogue epidemiologists had whispered into Blizzard's ears, had persuaded them

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Speaker 1: to run a grand experiment. Blizzard Entertainment weren't telling they

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Speaker 1: had their handsful as their initial puzzlement turned to alarm.

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Speaker 1: It was really scary, said the lead engineer, John Cash.

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Speaker 1: We didn't know why it was happening. Remember that I

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Speaker 1: mentioned that characters had pets, cats, spiderlings, giant snails, that

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Speaker 1: sort of thing. Well, those pets proved to be the

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Speaker 1: vector for corrupted blood escaping Zulgarub and spreading in the

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Speaker 1: cities the programmers had failed to anticipate how that might happen,

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Speaker 1: much like real world virologists overlooking some floor in their

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Speaker 1: biosecurity measures that allows a virus their studying to accidentally

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Speaker 1: escape from the lab. Perish the thought, and now corrupted

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Speaker 1: blood was making the game unplayable. You couldn't do very

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Speaker 1: much in World of Warcraft if you didn't periodically visit

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Speaker 1: the cities, and with the cities piled high with bones

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Speaker 1: and blood, that wasn't very appealing. Blizzard entertain and try

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Speaker 1: to organize a voluntary quarantine on the affected game servers.

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Speaker 1: It did not work. Too many players broke the rules.

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Speaker 1: Blizzard didn't really have the option of imposing a lockdown.

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Speaker 1: Who would choose to spend their time being a mythical

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Speaker 1: hero in a magical realm if they're forced to stay

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Speaker 1: at home all day. Blizzard did have one godlike power

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Speaker 1: that sadly wasn't open to human leaders in early twenty twenty.

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Speaker 1: They could take the entire game offline to reset it.

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Speaker 1: They didn't want to do that. It would be disruptive

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Speaker 1: and embarrassing, But World of Warcraft was so complex that

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Speaker 1: its creators weren't sure if there was another way to

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Speaker 1: fix it. Years later, when COVID began to spread in Earnest,

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Speaker 1: there was a flurry of newspaper articles asking what the

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Speaker 1: corrupted blood pandemic might tell us about the real one.

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Speaker 1: A lot, said Wired magazine, World of Warcraft perfectly predicted

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Speaker 1: our coronavirus pandemic. Maybe some of the parallels are unsettling.

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Speaker 1: But while the epidemiologists Eric Lofgren and Nina Fefferman did

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Speaker 1: indeed scrutinize the virtual pandemic for real world insights, they

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Speaker 1: concluded that as scientists they hadn't learned as much as

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Speaker 1: they'd hoped. Lofgren and Fefferman published an article in the

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Speaker 1: medical journal The Lancet arguing that the World of Warcraft

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Speaker 1: plague was a tantalizing missed opportunity for epidemiologists. It was

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Speaker 1: too different to a real epidemic, and Blizzard Entertainment hadn't

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Speaker 1: shared enough data about what happened. Epidemiologists are still eager

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Speaker 1: to watch realistic plagues unfold inside computer games, but games

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Speaker 1: companies aren't so keen. After a few days, Blizzard decided

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Speaker 1: to bite the bullet. It took the game offline, updated

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Speaker 1: the software and rebooted the servers. The corrupted blood plague

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Speaker 1: was over. Our next cautionary tails short deals not with

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Speaker 1: virtual blood shared in a computer generated world, but the

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Speaker 1: real kind, shared in the most catastrophic way following a

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Speaker 1: series of seemingly mundane errors. More of that after the break.

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Speaker 1: A year into the First World War, British soldiers are

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Speaker 1: being sent to fight in Gallipoli in what's now northern Turkey.

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Speaker 1: Five hundred men from the first Battalion of the seventh

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Speaker 1: Royal Scots have boarded a train in Edinburgh, Scotland in

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Speaker 1: the middle of the night. It's taking them south to Liverpool, England,

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Speaker 1: where a ship is waiting to carry them to the front.

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Speaker 1: They haven't been told where they're going. That they have

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Speaker 1: been issued with sun helmets, so it's not hard to guess.

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Speaker 1: It's an old train. The carriage is made from wood

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Speaker 1: and lit by natural gas stored in tanks underneath them.

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Speaker 1: It shouldn't really be in service anymore. Modern trains are

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Speaker 1: made from steel and lit with electric but this is wartime.

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Speaker 1: One of the soldiers is eighteen year old Peter Stoddart.

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Speaker 1: We were full of expectation through the night. We chatted

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Speaker 1: and played cards. But Peter and his friends aren't going

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Speaker 1: to make it to the bloody battlefield of Bilipolly. Many

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Speaker 1: won't even get to England. I'm Tim Harford and you're

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Speaker 1: listening to cautionary tales. Quentin's Hill is a railway junction

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Speaker 1: just on the Scottish side of the border with England.

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Speaker 1: There's a signal box and four tracks. The two tracks

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Speaker 1: in the middle are the main lines, one going north

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Speaker 1: into Scotland, one going south to England. And off to

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Speaker 1: the side of each main line there's a loop of

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Speaker 1: track where slow trains can be parked and wait while

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Speaker 1: faster trains can go by. Inside the signal box are

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Speaker 1: rows of great mechanical levers that the signalman throw to operate.

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Speaker 1: Both the points that allow trains to switch from one

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Speaker 1: track to another and move right, the colored signal arms

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Speaker 1: up and down the tracks that tell the train drivers

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Speaker 1: to stop and go, a bit like traffic lights on

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Speaker 1: a road. Signalman George Meekin had been on the night

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Speaker 1: shift at Quintin's Hill. At six in the morning, he

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Speaker 1: should have handed over to the day shift signalman James Tinsley.

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Speaker 1: Meekin and Tinsley were friends. They'd been doing shifts in

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Speaker 1: this signal box for years, and they had something else

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Speaker 1: in common. Neither enjoyed getting up early in the morning,

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Speaker 1: so they'd agreed between themselves that whoever was on the

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Speaker 1: day shift would sleep for a bit longer and come

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Speaker 1: in at a round half past six, not six o'clock sharp.

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Speaker 1: For Tinsley, this arrangement had an additional benefit. It meant

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Speaker 1: he could sometimes come to work on a slow local train.

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Speaker 1: Usually that local train went straight past Quintin's Hill without stopping,

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Speaker 1: but sometimes the northbound express train from London to Glasgow

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Speaker 1: would be running late, and that priority the slow local

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Speaker 1: train would put off the main line onto a loop

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Speaker 1: at Quintins Hill to let the express train go past.

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Speaker 1: That morning, May the twenty second, nineteen fifteen, James Tinsley

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Speaker 1: hitched a ride to work on the local train. It

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Speaker 1: arrived at Quintins Hill at half past six. George Meekin

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Speaker 1: in the signal box had to get it off the

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Speaker 1: northbound main line to make way for the delayed express,

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Speaker 1: but he couldn't put it on the side loop because

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Speaker 1: that was already occupied by a freight train. That happened

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Speaker 1: sometimes so Meekin switched the northbound local train onto the

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Speaker 1: southbound mainline. He could sit and wait there. Instead, the

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Speaker 1: local train ground to a halt. Tinsley hopped off and

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Speaker 1: went up to the signal box to start work for

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Speaker 1: the day. He brought the daily newspaper and handed it

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Speaker 1: to Meekin. Meekin handed Tinsley the notes had made on

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Speaker 1: a scrap piece of paper about everything he'd done since

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Speaker 1: six o'clock. Tinsley would copy them into the official log

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Speaker 1: book in his own handwriting, so it would appear to

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Speaker 1: their superiors that the shifts had changed at six o'clock,

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Speaker 1: as the rules said they must. Right, mate, here's the situation.

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Speaker 1: Meekin says, there's a Goods train on the northbound side loop.

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Speaker 1: Who've got to clear the northbound main line for the express,

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Speaker 1: So I've parked your local train on the southbound main line.

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Speaker 1: As you know, there's an empty coal train going south

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Speaker 1: and I'm sending that to wait on the southbound side

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Speaker 1: loop and the next train that'll want to come south,

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Speaker 1: there's a troop train. Got it? Well? Have you got

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Speaker 1: it back on the troop train? The soldiers have started

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Speaker 1: to drift off to sleep. The train rumbles south it

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Speaker 1: approaches the village of Kirkpatrick, four miles from the border

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Speaker 1: with England. The track starts to slope gently downwards and

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Speaker 1: the train begins to pick up speed. At Kirkpatrick's station,

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Speaker 1: there's another signal box. An empty coal train has just

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Speaker 1: passed Kirkpatrick going south at six thirty four am. The

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Speaker 1: signalman at Kirkpatrick learns from Quintin's Hill that the empty

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Speaker 1: coal train is no longer on the southbound mainline. It's

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Speaker 1: been safely moved onto the loop. He assumes that means

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Speaker 1: the line is clear for the troop train, but he

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Speaker 1: has to check. And this is the time before radios

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Speaker 1: and telephones were widespread. Messages are sent by a telegraph

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Speaker 1: that rings alarm bells. At six forty three am, he

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Speaker 1: asks Quintin's Hill, can I send the troop train through? Yes?

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Speaker 1: Comes the reply. The track's clear, but of course it's

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Speaker 1: not the local train. The train that brought Tinsley to

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Speaker 1: work is still parked on it. The signalman that Kirkpatrick

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Speaker 1: doesn't know that he watches the troop train turtle past.

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Speaker 1: Researchers who study workplace safety sometimes make a distinction between

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Speaker 1: work as imagined and work as done. The idea is

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Speaker 1: that what's written down in training manuals and rule books

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Speaker 1: and operating procedures might not always correspond to what employees

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Speaker 1: actually do in practice. The railway rule book, for example,

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Speaker 1: says that the night shift ends at six o'clock, precisely

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Speaker 1: as we've seen. That's not what happened at Quentin's Hill.

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Speaker 1: Meekin and Tinsley routinely swapped at around half past six instead,

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Speaker 1: but they had to hide that from their superiors, So

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Speaker 1: at six o'clock, whoever was on the night shift stopped

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Speaker 1: writing in the log book and switched to a scrap

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Speaker 1: of paper instead. The logbook can't tell us who sent

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Speaker 1: that signal at six thirty four to say that the

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Speaker 1: empty coal train had left the southbound mainline. Meekin will

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Speaker 1: later say he's sure it was Tinsley. Tinsley thinks it

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Speaker 1: must have been Meekin. No wonder, neither of them can remember.

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Speaker 1: They know that whoever sent that signal should have followed

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Speaker 1: up with another signal to tell Kirkpatrick that the southbound

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Speaker 1: mainline was nonetheless still blocked now by the local train,

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Speaker 1: But nobody does. The leavers in the signal box correspond

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Speaker 1: to the tracks, the main lines and side loops. The

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Speaker 1: rules say that when a track is blocked, the signalman

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Speaker 1: puts a ring or collar on the lever as a

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Speaker 1: visual reminder. Some even say train here in big letters.

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Speaker 1: That's work is imagined by the rule writers. In practice,

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Speaker 1: Meekin and Tinsley didn't bother with it. That's work has done.

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Speaker 1: Whenever a train stops for more than a few minutes,

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Speaker 1: The rules say someone from the train has to visit

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Speaker 1: the signal box to remind the signalman they're there, check

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Speaker 1: there's a collar on the lever, and sign the log

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Speaker 1: book to say they've done this. The fireman from the

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Speaker 1: local train signed the log book, but he didn't check

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Speaker 1: for a collar. Who uses those? And he didn't feel

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Speaker 1: the need to remind Tinsley that the train was there.

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Speaker 1: After all, Tinsley had only just got off it. If

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Speaker 1: you imagine that work always happens exactly as the rule

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Speaker 1: book dictates, it's to see how any signalman could forget

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Speaker 1: about a train on the line. When you look at

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Speaker 1: how work was actually done, it becomes less inexplicable. Here

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Speaker 1: is another example. According to the rules, the staff from

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Speaker 1: the trains shouldn't stay in the signal box for a

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Speaker 1: moment longer than necessary to exchange critical information, so as

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Speaker 1: not to risk distracting the signalman from his duties. In practice,

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Speaker 1: they might naturally hang around for a chat. When Tinsley

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Speaker 1: gets to the signal box, the brakesman from the goods

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Speaker 1: train is there. The rules say Meekin should leave as

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Speaker 1: soon as he comes off duty, but he doesn't. He

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Speaker 1: settles down to read the newspaper. The fireman from the

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Speaker 1: local train turns up, so does the brakesman from the

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Speaker 1: empty coal train. Meekin passes on the latest news about

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Speaker 1: the war. When workers done departs from workers imagined, like this,

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Speaker 1: whose fault is it? The traditional approach is to blame

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Speaker 1: work as done, but rules can sometimes be cumbersome or unrealistic.

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Speaker 1: Eric Holnagl is an academic who studies safety in the

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Speaker 1: healthcare sector. He argues that we should always be keen

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Speaker 1: to close the gap between work as done and work

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Speaker 1: as imagined, but we should keep an open mind about

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Speaker 1: whether it's the rules or the behavior that needs to adapt.

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Speaker 1: He gives the example of a hospital, whether written procedures

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Speaker 1: say nurses should take blood samples from patients only when

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Speaker 1: a doctor requests them, but nurses routinely take samples from

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Speaker 1: very ill patients before the doctor has arrived. It saves

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Speaker 1: precious time. Should the nurses be reprimanded or should the

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Speaker 1: rule book be amended to close the gap between workersagened

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Speaker 1: and workers done? Managers need to understand what workers actually do,

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Speaker 1: and workers need to feel free to be honest. If

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Speaker 1: the railway managers knew that the signalman didn't always use

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Speaker 1: the lever collars, they might have come up with a

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Speaker 1: better system. If Meekin and Tinsley had felt free to ask,

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Speaker 1: can we change shifts at six thirty, they wouldn't have

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Speaker 1: needed their subterfuge With the log book. Tinsley sets about

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Speaker 1: copying the entries from Meekin's scrap of paper into the

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Speaker 1: log book. Meekin and the train workers are chatting about

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Speaker 1: the war news. Tinsley hears the signal from Kirkpatrick, is

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Speaker 1: the southbound main line clear? The lever isn't in the

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Speaker 1: position that would remind him the line is blocked, and

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Speaker 1: he responds without thinking, yes, the line is clear. The

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Speaker 1: train he arrived on has slipped his mind entirely on

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Speaker 1: the Troop train. Eighteen year old Peter Stoddart is jolted

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Speaker 1: away as he's thrown across the carriage. Earth is going on.

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Speaker 1: Watching from the signal box are horrified. James Tinsley and

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Speaker 1: George Meekin see exactly what's happened. The troop train has

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Speaker 1: plowed into the local train on the southbound main line.

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Speaker 1: It was going much too fast to stop in time.

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Speaker 1: The old wooden carriages of the troop train are now

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Speaker 1: scattered zigzag across both tracks. Tinsley and Meekin know what's

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Speaker 1: about to happen too. The late running London to Glasgow

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Speaker 1: Express is powering up the northbound mainline straight at the debris.

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Speaker 1: It won't be able to stop in time either. In

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Speaker 1: the troop train, Peter Stoddart tries to get up, then

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Speaker 1: tries again, but something is pinning down his left leg.

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Speaker 1: He hears the steam whistle of the Express and the

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Speaker 1: desperate screeching of graves, then everything goes dark. When Stoddart

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Speaker 1: comes to again, he finds himself halfway down an embankment

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Speaker 1: that looks up and there was a little lark singing

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Speaker 1: its damned head off. He remembers, I saw my mate

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Speaker 1: a few yards away. He was laughing like hell at me.

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Speaker 1: I put my arms out to him and it was

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Speaker 1: only his head, his head with his mouth and eyes opened.

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Speaker 1: I broke down and started to cry. I don't know

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Speaker 1: for how long. Stoddart gets to his feet and scrambles

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Speaker 1: up the embankment. It's carnage. There are body parts everywhere.

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Speaker 1: Some soldiers had wriggled free of the troop train into

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Speaker 1: the path of the onrushing express. Many more are trapped

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Speaker 1: and they can't be rescued because the wooden carriages are

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Speaker 1: burning fiercely. The crash has punctured the gas cylinders from

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Speaker 1: the hot coals from the steam engine have set the

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Speaker 1: gas alight. Three railway staff died at Quintin's Hill and

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Speaker 1: nine passengers from the local train and the express, but

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Speaker 1: it was on the troop train that the heaviest toll fell.

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Speaker 1: The Royal Scots lost two hundred and fourteen soldiers. Only

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Speaker 1: eighty three of the bodies could ever be identified. The

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Speaker 1: Scottish court took the traditional approach. They blamed the workers,

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Speaker 1: not the rules. They found that work has done was

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Speaker 1: entirely at fault Meekin and Tinsley were found guilty of

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Speaker 1: culpable homicide. Both spent a year in prison, but when

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Speaker 1: they got out, the railway company gave them jobs again.

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Speaker 1: Perhaps the bosses knew deep down that their own rules

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Speaker 1: had also been to blame. It's always easy to find

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Speaker 1: fault with workers done, but workers imagined had played its

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Speaker 1: part too. For a list of our sources, see the

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Speaker 1: show notes at Tim Harford dot com. Cautionary Tales is

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Speaker 1: written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's produced

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Speaker 1: by Ryan Dilley, with support from Courtney Guarino and Emily Vaughan.

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Speaker 1: The sound design and original music is the work of

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Speaker 1: Pascal Wise. Julia Barton edited the scripts. It features the

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Speaker 1: voice talents of Ben Crowe, Melanie Guttridge, Stella Harford, and

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Speaker 1: Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without

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Speaker 1: the work of Mia LaBelle, Jacob Weisberg, Heather Fane, John Schnarz,

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Speaker 1: Carlie Migliori, Eric Sandler, Royston Basserve, Maggie Taylor, Nicole Mrano,

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Speaker 1: and Yellow Lakhan and Maya Kanig. Cautionary Tales is a

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Speaker 1: production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show, please

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Speaker 1: remember to share, rate and review. And if you want

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Speaker 1: to hear the show ad free and into exclusive Cautionary

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Speaker 1: Tale shorts, then sign up for Pushkin Plus on the

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Speaker 1: show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm,

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Speaker 1: slash plush