Yea, it was only when the MkII fleet were phased out after Clapham in the mid 90s that we finally got rid of them.
The UK railway infrastructure has, like so much else in the UK, always been resistant to learning from best practice abroad (unless it's American).
eg The BR standard steam engines designed after WWII were laughable in comparison to pre-war French designs. keep to the Fen Causeway
The Clapham disaster involved MkIs, which were weak, but metallic, and at least one source (see last entry here) claims they were unfairly demonised (e.g. weak but not THAT weak), while Wiki quotes a source at length about MkI's role in the post-war reduction of traffic deaths. Still, MkIs were below UIC norm (in fact, they were used for the research done as basis for the UIC norms!), as they had a stong steel underframe but a separate carbody. Regarding wood, you must have meant the wooden panels inside (the latter was true of the first MkII too). I also found that post-Clapham, your railways adopted crashworthiness norms stricter than UIC stiffness norms (twice as strong forces on some points), meant to protect up to 40 mph, a speed under which most British rail accidents are said to happen. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
