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 | October, 2018
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. […]
Going public (again!) – family history, genealogy & more
Regular readers of this blog & our Twitter feed (@RWLDproject) will know we’re always keen to take the project out to as many people as possible. So when a couple of chances came up to connect with family historians & genealogists, we leapt at the chance! This post collects together a few thoughts about two […]
35,000 records from The National Archives!
Previous blog posts have already discussed the 2 project extensions in place at the National Railway Museum, here and here. But that’s not all we’ve been working on. With the support of The National Archives, we’re delighted that we’ll be able to include railway company records in a new extension to our work! This is […]
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 […]
James Hodge, 1895
By Nick Planas on October 1, 2018 in Blog, Family History, Guest contribution, Linking sources, Non-company employee
In this post we’re pleased to feature another guest contributor, Nick Planas. Nick contacted our project earlier in the year, offering details of an accident which resulted in the death of one of his ancestors in the 1890s. Although currently outside the timeframe of our project, it was of course still of interest, and Nick […]
