It’s been a while since we blogged a case from our Great Eastern Railway benevolent fund dataset, so we thought we’d return to it to give it a bit more prominence in the project. In amongst the 500 or so individuals who applied to the fund for support we can find all sort of injuries, […]
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Trap & Drag – 1914 style
By Mike Esbester on July 8, 2019 in Accident reports, Blog, Family History, Guest contribution, Passenger
In this guest post, project supporter Peter Munro looks at a passenger accident from 1914 – what would today be known as a ‘trap and drag’ incident, something that the Rail Accident Investigation Branch flagged as a real concern on our recent visit to its Farnborough office. Peter has also helped the project in a […]
Two scalds, same cause
Of all of the types of injuries that appear in our database, burns and scalds are relatively infrequent. This might just be an artefact of the cases that were chosen for investigation by the Inspectors – or it might be a reasonable representation of the actual numbers of these types of cases. Regardless, the accidents […]
Rail Safety Week 2019
This week is Rail Safety Week 2019, an industry-led initiative working to improve safety for everyone in rail, whether passenger, worker or more. Everything we can do day-to-day to make a difference is helpful, but it’s great to see a dedicated period to really focus minds. There’s all sorts going on during Rail Safety Week, […]
Reading 1914: passengers, workers, family
Our project has focused on accidents to railway workers, rather than passengers, as numerically far more workers were killed or injured on the railways and they remain understudied. When we started out, in 2016, we were using just one set of records – the Board of Trade reports into worker accidents. We took the decision […]
THE Genealogy Show – spreading the project word
Only 6 weeks’ ago we were at Family Tree Live at Alexandra Palace – and last week we took the project to another family history show: THE Genealogy Show, at the NEC in Birmingham. And we’re delighted to say this one went just as well! We took along the tried and tested mix of an […]
Volunteers’ Week 7: User appreciation!
For our final Volunteers’ Week post, we wanted to showcase just a few comments we’ve had on the project, from some of the people using the volunteers’ work in their own research. The comments come from academics, the rail industry, family historians and more – a tribute to the interest in the project and its […]
Volunteers’ Week 6: What the volunteers’ work means to the project institutions
In this post, those working with the volunteers at each of the project institutions reflect on the project so far, and in particular on what the volunteers are doing and have brought to their institutions. Read the previous Volunteers’ Week post, from volunteer Cheryl Hunnisett, here. National Railway Museum: The Railway Museum’s volunteers have […]
Volunteers’ Week 5: The fatal dangers of shunting
By Cheryl Hunnisett on June 5, 2019 in Accident reports, Blog, Family History, Guest contribution, Linking sources, Volunteers’ Week
In the latest of our Volunteers’ Week posts, project volunteer Cheryl Hunnisett, working with us at the Modern Records Centre, takes a look at one case she encountered in the records of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants trade union. This is another great example of the ways in which our volunteers are actively taking […]
Volunteers’ Week 4: One NRM volunteer’s experiences
In our fourth Volunteers’ Week blog post, National Railway Museum volunteer Philip James outlines some of what working on the project involves, and one case from our ongoing interwar extension which caught his eye. We’re indebted to Philip, who has been with us since the start and is now working on the third set of […]
