STOP
SIGNAL
Issue #1 - March 1998
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Welcome to issue #1 of Stop Signal, the new newsletter for Danger Ahead!
What's in this edition:
- Danger Ahead! gets its own newsletter
- Southall Disaster(Sept. '97) - HSE Inquiry
- High speed derailment at Salisbury - 1906
- Explosion and Fire in Cameroon
- The new look for Danger Ahead!
- A brand new, easy to remember URL makes it easy to find Danger Ahead!
- A host of new specialised search features available now
- Site Notes
- Tail Lamp
STOP SIGNAL
Stop Signal is new. Stop Signal is
FREE. Stop Signal is the new, free newsletter for Danger
Ahead! Now you can stay in touch with what's happening at
Danger Ahead! and get advance information about upcoming features.
Also, have your say on any topic related to the Danger Ahead!
site.
NB Be assured that your details will always be treated as
confidential and will never be released to any third party under any
circumstances.
To cancel your subscription
at any time, just send a blank e-mail to
railtec@geocities.com
and put
"unsubscribe" in the subject line.
Southall Disaster - Health and Safety Executive Inquiry
The HSE inquiry into the accident between a Great Western
Intercity 125 and an empty freight train opened on Tuesday February 2, 1998. In
addition to reporting on the proceedings, Danger Ahead now includes a feature on
this accident providing background information which the inquiry is likely to
examine.
Salisbury - 1906 individual, or corporate responsibility.
The issue of speed is actually about keeping it appropriate
and under control. Danger Ahead! begins a series of items on accidents
whose causes have been inappropriate speed. The first of these is the horrendous
smash at Salisbury in 1906. A serious question posed is less to do with the
error that may have been made by the engine-driver, rather the effect of market
forces, the rivalry between two competing companies for traffic and the need for
the engine driver to enhance his wages by accepting tips (bribes?) from
passengers to ensure a "fast run". Read the account at
and discover the facts behind this disaster.
Current
Reports
February 14 saw a terrible catastrophe on the railways in the
central African republic of Cameroon. Although the imediate cause of the
collision between two trains of petroleum tankers is at present unknown, it is
clear that the parlous state of the country's economy and the poverty of its
citizens contributed to the terrific death toll and the huge number of horrific
injuries. Look in Recent Reports for more details.
A New Look
Danger Ahead! has received a complete
facelift. And it's not just to make it look pretty. The aim has been to make it
easier to move around within the site. It now provides consistent navigation - there should be less chance of
getting lost!
In the past weeks the issue of load-speed has
been addressed. A new, start-page has been introduced which carries the site
stats utilities (a source of loading problems if one of the servers goes down -
particularly for Netscape users). This allows the majority of the page to load
even if the utilities misbehave. Access to the rest of the site is no longer
dependent on them loading correctly. The slow-to-appear pop-up window has also
gone. Considerable attention has also been paid to the various graphical
elements of the site to ensure that they are as Web-friendly as possible, again
reducing load time.
Should you encounter any
problems with the site please send e-mail to <railtec@geocities.com>.
travel.to/danger
The brand new, easy to remember URL is designed to make it
easier to find Danger Ahead! whenever you want. Give it a try
now...
Searches at Danger
Ahead!
Danger ahead now makes it easy for you to find the
rail-related resources that you want. Do a search on RailServe without having to
leave the site. Sniff-out what you want on multiple search-engines with Dogpile.
Get up-to-the-minute rail news from the wires with the special Yahoo search. A
direct link to ERICK'S Rail News brings current rail-related headlines and an
annotated list of current and archived news items from around the Web. Finally,
check out the selected and annotated links at Danger
Ahead!
All this is available now at Danger
Ahead!
Check it out: http://travel.to/danger
Site Notes
If you have been using the URL MINDER service which
was previously available, you may have received somewhat spurious announcements
of changes. These have occurred because the MINDER robot detects even the most
minor changes - even when we've just been tweaking the HTML. If you have
subscribed to Stop Signal, you may now wish to cancel your registration with URL
MINDER next time your receive a notification.
Tail Lamp
The following statistics were part of a special edition of Stop Signal
which was sent out to individuals who had shown their interest in Danger Ahead
by signing the Guestbook or by sending e-mail to railtec. They are repeated here
for the interest of new subscribers.
Danger Ahead! first went live on 6 December 1997
As of 10 February 1998, the site has received more than 1700 visitors.
On 12 December 1997 a statistics program was invoked. This reveals that since that date the site has received in excess of 2000 "hits" with almost 1350 unique accesses.
The HitBox 1000 progam currently ranks Danger Ahead! at 199 (out of 1000) in the hobbies section!!!
The most popular browser used by visitors is MSIE 4 - about 29% MS Internet Explorer in its various guises accounts for nearly 50% of all visitor's browsers and the various shades of Netscape make up 20%. AOL gets a look-in too with 4%.
Feed-back is always appreciated - praise or criticism. If
you would like to make any comment about Stop Signal or
Danger Ahead! please send e-mail to: railtec@geocities.com. Any mail received
will be considered for publication UNLESS you put "DO NOT PUBLISH"
somewhere in the message (or subject line).
Danger Ahead! Historic Railway Disasters
E-mail: railtec@geocities.com
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