Full AspenCat Catalog

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

In an audacious attack, the London to Birmingham mail train is robbed and derailed, causing many casualties. Planned with military precision, this crime proves a challenge to Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck who fights to untangle a web of murder, blackmail and destruction.

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"May 1870. Crowds throng the Boston station, mesmerized by the mechanical wonder huffing on the rails: the Pullman Hotel Express, the first train to travel from coast to coast. For two young women, strangers until this fateful day, it's the beginning of a journey that will change their lives. Sensitive Louisa dreads the trip, but with limited prospects, she's reluctantly joined the excursion as a governess to a wealthy family. Hattie is traveling...

December 1864. As a cold winter wind scours the Worcestershire countryside, an excursion train comes through a tunnel in the Malvern Hills, only to be confronted by a blockage on the line ahead. The driver manages to slow the train down so that the impact is minimised, but the passengers are alarmed. The first person to alight is Cyril Hubbleday, the man in charge of the excursion. He walks to the front of the locomotive - and, as he is talking to...

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...

For three hot summer months in 1869, Ernst Mendelssohn-Barthody, the nephew of famed composer Felix Mendelssohn, traveled by train across the United States accompanied by his older cousin. His letters back home to Prussia offer fascinating glimpses of a young, rapidly growing America. Unceasingly annoyed at the Americans’ tendency to spit all the time, the Prussian aristocrats seemingly visited everyone and everywhere: meeting President Grant and...

"1862. A goods train is going through the Sapperton Tunnel when it hits a makeshift pen of sheep inexplicably set up near the exit. The animals are slaughtered by the impact whilst the train hits a pile of rocks and is derailed, seriously injuring the occupants. Inspector Colbeck is called in to investigate and discovers that the shepherd and his dog are missing. Stephen Ryle who owned the sheep is shocked by the occurrence which further affects him...