Watch Railway Murders

It is one of London's great unsolved mysteries. Late one evening an elderly Polish Countess was travelling home from a party when she was attacked at Gloucester Road Tube station. Stabbed repeatedly on the platform, she died in hospital later that night.

Jimmy Alcott was a troubled young man. He had ed the army after leaving school, but his time in ended in disgrace when he was court-martialled for the violent murder of a civilian.

In 1910, the city of Newcastle was transfixed by a murder trial. A clerk had been killed on a train and his wages bag stolen with hundreds of pounds inside. Accused of the murder was a local man named John Alexander Dickman.

In 1895, two railway policemen surprised a gang of thieves in a Wigan goods yard. A vicious fight broke out and Detective Sergeant Robert Kidd was stabbed to death. It was the first time a railway police officer had been murdered in the line of duty.

Percy Lefroy Mapleton was a talented young writer. But he was also a liar, a thief and a fantasist. By 1881, he had become fixated on a beautiful stage actress. Convinced the two of them belonged together, he concocted an elaborate fraud to win her heart.

In 1864, the body of a wealthy banker was discovered on the tracks between Bow and Hackney Wick stations in London. But the death of Thomas Briggs was no accident - it was the first murder on a British railway.