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 […]
Archive | International
Who Was Cricpante Rego?
By Chris Jolliffe on November 2, 2020 in Accident reports, Blog, Family History, Guest contribution, International, Linking sources
Around two weeks’ ago, we put out a request on our Twitter account to find out more about ‘Cricpante Rego’ – and as well as receiving some helpful ideas very quickly, one of our project volunteers, Chris Jolliffe, was inspired to dig further. She came up with this guest post, which reveals a fascinating story. […]
Recollections of World-Changing Events
In this guest post, National Railway Museum volunteer Philip James looks back at some big events in the recent past. He gives a personal perspective on these acts, most of which have a significant transport connection. Coming after last week’s post, which looked at how railway staff in Ireland were caught up on political violence […]
Gunshot wounds
Today’s post, from the project’s Helen Ford at the Modern Records Centre, looks at a particularly difficult part of Ireland’s past: the lead up to partition 100 years ago. Railways have long been political, but in this case, they were an active site of contest, involving attacks on infrastructure and people – with tragic results. […]
‘Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!’
Our project is documenting the many risks incidental to railway working – including at times animal dangers. We’ll be coming back to the more usual of these in a future blog post, including horses, cows, and sheep. But for today, we’re taking a brief look at some of the more exotic animal dangers encountered on […]
The European UK
Sadly for a great many of our readers the none-too-subtle title of this post will be self-explanatory. The UK’s departure from the European Union on 1 January – on what terms we don’t know at the time of writing (21 December) – is very problematic and, in my opinion, at best misguided. I feel very […]
Irish Accident Records – untapped potential
In this guest post Norman Gamble, the Archivist of the Irish Railway Record Society (IRRS), introduces the Society and its archives – including the great potential offered by their holdings of staff accident registers. As yet these volumes are, like their British equivalents, unindexed and untapped – something we’d like to change, working with the […]
A New Zealand Christmas Eve tragedy
Whilst as a project the records we’re making available are focused on Britain and Ireland, we’re interested in how railway safety has played out in the past across the world. We’ve featured international posts before, where they’ve involved British workers overseas. However, this guest post breaks new ground for us, focusing solely on an international […]
