The history of the law as it applies to railway and dock police is complex. Things take a lot of unpicking and it is not unusual for errors in interpretation to persist for decades. It is an area of niche interest to police historians and remains largely unresearched. Even a little knowledge of the subject shows that police officers of all generations have sought to make, often inadequate, laws work in the interests of justice. Officers of railway and dock forces are also guilty of more than a dose of legal wishful thinking. I have written elsewhere about the nonsense of the restricted jurisdiction of modern BTP officers. Various opportunities to put this right have been missed. Most particularly at the time of the drafting of the Railways and Transport Safety Act 2003, which is the modern legislative basis for BTP. The Act, which clarified jurisdiction in some ways also resulted in the loss of the ‘in the vicinity’ power. Another opportunity came with the Police an