In this guest blog post, Sue Page looks at the life & death of her Great Grandfather and the impact it had on his family over a longer period. Sue came along to the workshop session the project put on at Family Tree Life hoping to find out more – hopefully she did about the […]
Archive | Guest contribution
The death of Joseph (Joe) Parkin & its impact on his family
By Gordon Dudman on September 30, 2019 in Accident aftermath, Blog, Family History, Guest contribution, Linking sources
As part of Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine’s ‘Transcription Tuesday’, our project made available a set of records produced by the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, one of the major railway trade unions. It listed over 2000 cases involving members, many of them accidents. In this blog post, one of the transcribers, Gordon […]
Dernancourt (Somme) railway accident, 1918
In this post, guest contributor Sandra Gittins brings us back to the First World War, when accidents to railway staff didn’t stop. She’s already blogged about a case which led to an injury for a railwayman on active service in France (here); this time, sadly, 2 fatalities resulted. As always, we’re very happy to receive […]
We want your accidents!
Well – hopefully not your own accidents, but we are interested in any cases of accidents to railway workers in the past about which you have information. Read on to find out more – including a request for your help! Followers on Twitter will have seen our call a few weeks’ ago for suggestions of […]
John Haughton: the life and death of a railwayman
By Neil Gordon on August 12, 2019 in Accident aftermath, Accident reports, Blog, Family History, Guest contribution, Linking sources
We’re really pleased to be able to feature this guest blog post from Neil Gordon – it’s always heartening to receive contributions, but this is particularly interesting one, written by a descendent of the worker, John Haughton, at the centre of the piece. We met Neil at the Family Tree Live show, where he mentioned […]
Trap & Drag – 1914 style
By Peter Munro 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 […]
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 […]
Volunteers’ Week 3: Coming Across My Great Grandfather in an Accident Register for 1917
We’ve been looking forward to featuring this post from Rosemary Leonard, one of the volunteers working at The National Archives on the railway company records. Rosemary mentioned the subject of this post, a remarkable coincidence, when we first met in a co-production session – so we’re really glad that she has ‘written it up’ for […]
Volunteers’ Week 2: Volunteering with the Railway Work, Life & Death Project
In this post, the second in our series for Volunteers’ Week – the first is here – National Railway Museum volunteer Chris Heaton outlines why he volunteers with the project and what he gets out of it. Perhaps the greatest testament occurs at the start of the final paragraph, where Chris says he’d do it […]
