On Land: As darkness settled down on the little Scots hamlet of Castlecary late one afternoon last week, the local train from Dundee pulled into the London & North Eastern Railway station. Around it swirled a December blizzard that blotted out the lights of the village, stalled the train. Without a second's warning the mile-a-minute Edinburgh-Glasgow express following the local crashed into it. Rescuers, lighted by bonfires made of debris from shattered wooden coaches, took out 91 injured, 35 dead—Britain's worst rail-road disaster in two decades.
On Sea: En route from Kobe to...