WHEN WAS THE FIRST RAILWAY POLICE FORCE CREATED? William Horwood as Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis ( Photo: Creative Commons: National Portrait Gallery) Q When is a police force not a police force? A When it polices the railways and docks (amongst others) WHAT IS A POLICE FORCE? A sure way of irritating members of the British Transport Police force is to remind them that BTP is not a police force. BTP is not the same as other forces and it is painful for us as amateur police historians to note that BTP is still treated differently to other forces, despite decades of excellence in policing. The ‘force’ question is just one of the anomalies that still exist and I will revisit some of the others in future. This is not an exercise in semantics but rather it is a question of how railway, dock and canal policing developed as a sidebar to mainstream police structures. The anomali