Set in the 1850s when rail travel took off, this title, written by Edward Marston, also chronicles the new crimes it inspired.

Detective Inspector Colbeck and his assistant Inspector Leeming are called in when the body of an ex-hangman is found on an excursion train, murdered with a noose. When a second victim is killed the same way, Colbeck knows he must act fast to catch the murderer before more lives are lost.

As a train speeds over the Sankey Viaduct, the dead body of a man is hurled into the canal below. Inspector Robert Colbeck and Sergeant Victor Leeming take charge of their most complex and difficult case yet.

When Cambridge student Robert Pomeroy is killed on the railway, Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming are called upon to investigate. With academic disputes, romantic interests and a sporting rivalry with Oxford in play, the Railway Detective will have his work cut out.

A goods train speeds through the Sapperton Tunnel, but disaster strikes before it can reach the other side as it collides with an unusual blockage on the tracks: seven sheep penned in place. Specially requested to investigate the carnage in Gloucestershire, Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming are confronted with a bizarre case unlike anything they've encountered before. Stephen Rydall, board member of the Great Western Railway, who manage the route,...

Halloween, 1861. A special train with two carriages steams across the Lake District at night on its way to a place notorious for its record of supernatural incidents. Most of those on board have been fortified by alcohol so the mood is boisterous. Lighting inside the carriages is poor and without warning, the lamp goes out in the last compartment of the second carriage, plunging it into darkness. When the special reaches the end of its journey, the...

1861, East Anglia. Alone in a first-class carriage, the Swarbricks are robbed at gunpoint, but when the universally-admired Swarbrick fights back, the train robber kills the man working to unify East Anglia's tangle of railway networks. Inspector Colbeck is brought in from London, as the only detective in Britain with enough expertise for the job. But as Swarbrick's glowing reputation begins to crumble, the line of investigation isn't clear: Is this...

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. Unfortunately, boiler smith Kenneth Rodman is headed for the grave sooner than he'd expected, or he will be once his missing head is found. Colbeck, the Railway Detective, finds his investigation into Rodman's...

1859, St. Mary's Church, Sponden. A little girl playing hide-and-seek jumps into a freshly dug grave to find a dead man already occupying it. It is the body of Cecile Norton, a senior director of the Midland Railway. Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming travel to Derbyshire to investigate.