The railways were highly ordered and regulated spaces. They had to be, to ensure they ran and that (for passengers at least) they ran safely. But that doesn’t mean illicit travel wasn’t a problem. The railway companies employed their own police forces, to keep order, protect company assets and reassure the public. Of course, railway […]
Archive | Accident reports
Eagerly anticipating travel
As a project we’re keen on archives! No great surprise, given the records we rely upon are cared for in archives – and one of our partner institutions, the Modern Records Centre, is an archive, and another, the National Railway Museum, contains an archive. We also know that not everyone can get to physical archives […]
Project work – and an accident at Chadwell Heath
By Philip James on June 8, 2020 in Accident reports, Blog, Guest contribution, Linking sources, Local History, Non-company employee
In this week’s post, National Railway Museum volunteer Philip James outlines more of what working on the project involves, and one case from our current extension, covering the Board of Trade inspectors’ reports for 1900-1910. Philip has been working on the project since we started in 2016, so must now have seen well over a […]
Policing the line
As we’ve noted in the past, the railway companies didn’t just run trains – their interests extended much further. As a result, they employed all sorts of staff that might not seem obvious, extending into road haulage and shipping, for example, as well as they myriad roles that were needed to keep the engines and […]
Finding staff, preventing accidents
People are absolutely central to our project. Thanks to the hard work of our volunteers, we’re able to get at the individuals behind the big figure statistics of British & Irish railway staff accidents in the later 19th and early 20th century (something recently discussed in relation to Covid-19 in this media comment). Our database […]
Dying for a wee – 2
Two weeks’ ago we looked at accidents to carriage and wagon staff who were keeping the railway network’s on-train toilets stocked. Provision was clearly made for passenger comfort and convenience – but what about the staff? In this week’s post, we’re looking at those cases where operating staff had to improvise when they wanted to […]
Inspecting the Inspectors
In this guest post, NRM volunteer Brian Grainger reflects on some questions that have occurred to him in the course of transcribing the state accident reports – first in our first dataset, then for the interwar period (currently being prepared for release) and now in the final run of data covering 1900-1910. The project is […]
Dying for a wee – 1
As travellers today (when we’re able to resume travelling) we may be less than enamoured of the toilets on trains – all too often cramped, unclean or even out-of-order. But at least they’ve been provided for us. That isn’t always the case for staff – and that’s a long-standing issue. Earlier this year I wrote […]
The Great Eastern Railway and accidents to staff
By Ian Strugnell on April 13, 2020 in Accident reports, Blog, Guest contribution, Linking sources, Local History
We’re grateful to Ian Strugnell for this guest blog post. Ian is a member of the Great Eastern Railway Society, and got in touch after we contributed a piece about the project to the Society’s Newsletter. Of particular relevance was the work we’d done on the GER’s Benevolent Fund book (see here). Ian has been […]
Death in the dark: Nottingham’s hidden history
Building a railway line was always a challenge – but at least in the early railway era, when Britain was relatively less urbanised, it was often possible to gain access to lucrative city spaces, traffic and revenue. As the 19th century went on, that became more and more problematic as city centre land was built […]
