After many years of concern, the 1902 Prevention of Accidents Rules introduced several measures to improve railway worker safety. One was the requirement to cover or protect trip hazards like point rodding and signal wires. Whilst progress was made, it took time, as today’s case, which took place nearly a decade later, demonstrates. It took […]
Archive | Accident reports
Halloween: A mystery man, an eerie rabbit & a railway death
As we’re heading towards Halloween, it seems only fitting that we’ve a supernatural case, involving an accident to a railway worker, to bring to your attention. It’s a great demonstration of the promise of our project work, combined with digitisation and transcription of seemingly unrelated documents: the combination and linking of sources is very pleasing. […]
Burns Awareness – past & present
17 October is National Burns Awareness Day, organised by the British Burn Association, a charity set up in 1968 to educate and encourage research into all aspects of burn injury, its treatment and prevention. Some railway staff could have used the Association over 50 years previously, however, as they experienced burns as a part of […]
Monorail, monorail, monorail …
Most of the cases in our database are fairly standard – certainly in terms of being above ground and referring to ‘standard gauge’ track (the well-known 4 foot 8 and a half inches between rails, albeit the reasons for which are debated). However, there are some outliers – including accidents on underground railways (London and […]
The ‘excusable mistake’ that injured three
In many of the cases found in our database the Railway Inspectorate report provides an attribution of responsibility for the accident. Around a quarter of these mention things like a ‘lack of care’, and individuals’ ‘own want of reasonable care’ (even in one case their ‘stupid want of care’). What is less common is finding […]
Where has 1915 gone?
Have you been delving deep into the project database, following us on Twitter (@RWLDproject) or keeping a close eye on the ‘On this day’ Twitter feed on the homepage of the website? If so, and you were paying close attention, you might have noticed over the last 2 months or so you’ve not seen any […]
Navigating accidents in the pre-digital era
Sandwiched in the pages of the blue-bound volume are tattered and faded place-markers, paper browned with age, sometimes torn or crumbled to the point of no return. Way-finders in the several hundred page volume, at the top of each they have a brief pointer to the pertinent thing being marked, some written by different hands: […]
Forgotten pasts at Glasgow Queen St
At the moment, Glasgow Queen St station is undergoing a major redevelopment, which has included exposing the Victorian glass frontage, concealed for the last 40 years by a concrete carbuncle now demolished. However, what isn’t so easy to see is another hidden past: the human cost of working on the railway, in employee accidents. This […]
Demolishing Wolverton Works
It was reported last week that the proposed demolition of most of the remaining original parts of the London and North Western Railway’s Wolverton Works had been given the go-ahead. This is a good moment, then, to think a little about an intangible part of the Works’ heritage: the experiences of the staff, without whom […]
The final July multiples
This month we’ve already highlighted a a number of cases in which workers had 2 accidents (see here and here). Before the month is out, we have 2 more individuals from our database to add to this tally. The first person involved was Frederick Charles Cuff. A pilot guard for the Barry Railway company, he […]