When we think of railway accidents in the past, we probably immediately conjure images of the (thankfully rare) big passenger train crashes. Our project has always been about going beyond that, to look at the far more numerous accidents – to staff. Even so, most of what appears in our database is concerned with train […]
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Wrong place, wrong time – Mrs Quelch
By Mike Esbester on September 20, 2022 in Accident reports, Blog, Linking sources, Non-company employee
Sometimes someone is simply in the wrong place, at the wrong time. On 30 September 1922, Mrs Quelch was one of those people. Her case is interesting in its own right, as we shall see. It also demonstrates something important about our database: not everyone featured in the database was a railway worker. Plenty of […]
Dual fuel steam loco – with a bang
We try to blog about fairly typical cases found in our project database – like our post two weeks’ ago, on a 1922 shunting accident and first aid. However, some of the cases found in the database are surprising and far from usual – and it’s hard not to focus on them. This week is […]
Holywell Junction – the men, pt 2
In yesterday’s blog we outlined what we knew of two of the men involved in the Holywell Junction accident, Richard Jones and Alfred Jones. Today we look at the other two men. Josiah Jones Josiah Jones was born in Whitford, Flintshire, in 1881, to Owen, a carpenter, and Elizabeth. He had an elder brother, […]
Holywell Junction – the men, pt 1
By Mike Esbester on August 31, 2022 in Accident aftermath, Accident reports, Anniversary, Blog, Family History
Yesterday’s blog looked at the accident at Holywell Junction on 1 September 1922. The next blog posts will look at the men involved. To be honest, the heart sank a bit when we saw we had a case which involved 3 ‘Jones’ – but we’ve found at least a little information about each of the […]
Listed accidents
Recently it was announced that the site of the Edge Hill engine station in Liverpool has been given listed status. This is to mark the important heritage status of the site, which is one of the places and moments in the development of main line railways. It was the original terminus of the Liverpool and […]
Holywell Junction, 1 September 1922
Alfred Henry Jones. Josiah Jones. Richard Jones. Daniel Roberts. Once again we start a blog post with the names of multiple men killed at work on the railways. Once again, it’s a case of track workers, hit by a train whilst they were maintaining the lines. It comes nearly 6 months after we […]
From Egypt to Walthamstow
By Mike Esbester on August 14, 2022 in Accident reports, Blog, International, Linking sources, Non-company employee
There are many unexpected stories in our project database. Indeed, that’s one of the many excellent things it brings: it allows us to see how remarkable everyday lives in the past were. But even amongst that, we find people and cases that were simply surprising. The case of Mohammed El Zoheiri was one of those […]
Frederick James Webb
Following Monday’s blog post, previous blog contributor Rosie Rowley was inspired to do a bit more research into Frederick Webb, the man at the heart of the case. Here she shares with us her findings – our thanks to Rosie for this unprompted but very welcome research. We love it when someone is inspired by […]
Instructive First Aid
Continuing our look at the cases found in our new data release, this week we have the 1922 accident to Frederick James Webb. In many respects this was a typical accident, as we shall see. However, in one aspect it was atypical – in a way which says interesting things about how the railway companies […]
