Whilst blog posts have largely reflected our project sources and focus, and looked at mainline railways in the UK and Ireland, this doesn’t capture all of the railway activity – and dangers – in our nations. Plenty of railway systems were privately-owned and operated – like the coal railways which came to be part of […]
Archive | Blog
On Track for Change: North Road Works’ Artificial Limb Bench
We’re delighted to feature this blog post from a team at the Head of Steam – Darlington Railway Museum. It focuses on a topic of great interest to our project – provision for injured staff after an accident, via prosthetic limbs. It arises from the exhibition currently on at the Museum, on this important topic. […]
Charles Stewart, 1806-1864
By Pauline Figliolini on August 30, 2021 in Accident aftermath, Blog, Family History, Guest contribution
This guest blog post, from Pauline Figliolini, came about after Pauline had found the project and enquired about early staff accident records. Sadly we didn’t have further details to help directly, but we made a couple of suggestions and after a few emails back and forth Pauline not only found more information on her Great […]
On Track for Change: Receiving an artificial limb
By Head of Steam Team on August 23, 2021 in Accident aftermath, Blog, Disability, Guest contribution
We’re delighted to welcome back the team from Head of Steam – Darlington Railway Museum, with more from their ‘On Track for Change’ exhibition. This post looks at some of the people who received artificial limbs manufactured at the North Road Works in Darlington – including one necessitated by service in the First World War. […]
Hezekiah Brett – ‘Cut in Two by an Express’
Francis Howcutt has looked at where his family history and railways met previously, in this blog post, so we’re delighted to welcome him back. In this post, Francis explores the story of Hezekiah Brett, a cousin of his 2x great grandfather. Sadly, Hezekiah committed suicide in 1895, but the reasons mentioned at the inquest may […]
Jock Carlin
In this week’s post, returning guest author Gordon Dudman reflects upon the start of his railway career – a formative influence, but one which had a tragic end. Gordon noted that it was, sadly, a good demonstration of how the system might fail individuals. This is taken from the career autobiography that Gordon is currently […]
An accident at Highbury & Is
This week we have another guest post from Philip James, part of the NRM team and our most prolific blog contributor – read his other posts here. Philip starts by giving us a bit of insight into both the project work and a potential direction for the future, before exploring one of the accident cases […]
Bartholomew Stephenson – from pub landlord to permanent way worker
By John Davison Cameron on April 1, 2019 in Accident reports, Blog, Family History, Guest contribution, Linking sources
We’re pleased to be able to feature another guest post, from another person the project has been able to help. John contacted us via our feedback form to let us know that he’d made use of the project database and found it useful – something we always like to hear, so do get in touch […]
Connecting people through the project
People are central to our project in so many ways. Obviously the railway staff who had the accidents, details of which we’re making more easily findable (via our database). Their families, too, as the accidents rarely simply affected one person. Their work colleagues also appear in the records. Behind the project work are several small […]
Trespassing Incidents
In this post, one of our project volunteers – who wishes to remain anonymous – looks at a new topic for us: trespass. Like staff accidents, it is another topic that has always been rather overlooked in favour of passenger train crashes. Even within our work, it has so far fallen out of scope – […]
