In this post, guest author Mark Greenwood looks at a passenger accident from 1884, which went on to have an interesting ‘afterlife’ in various forms of cultural production. He looks at how a mechanical fault led to the crash at Bullhouse, in Yorkshire – but also the part that the geography of the site played. […]
Archive | Passenger
John Hurrell – rushing on a platform
This week our blog features a guest post, from Marc Treloar, a 2nd year student at the University of Portsmouth. It’s particularly nice for us to include, as he and fellow student Archie McDermott-Paintin worked with project co-lead Mike to use project data and insight. They did this as part of their work on the […]
Railway and everyday risks of 1906
In today’s post, project volunteer and by-now regular blogger Philip James has a look at a number of accidents reported in a single issue of The Times newspaper in 1906. It helps us put railway staff issues, including accidents, into a wider perspective. He also draws some interesting connections with discussions in 2021 about 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 […]
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 […]
Fog, steam and speed: fireman Edward Booth’s gravestone
We’re going beyond the edges of the project in this post, to look at a passenger crash and its aftermath. This week it’s the anniversary of the Ulleskelf accident, which took place on 24 November 1906. It killed two railwaymen, the driver and fireman of the express train that ploughed into the back of a […]
Multiple Scottish casualties – the Flying Scotsman & Sandilands Viaduct cases, April 1914
April 1914 saw 2 railway accidents which raise interesting issues about the differences between worker and passenger incidents – particularly as both involved multiple casualties. On 14 April 1914, the Flying Scotsman train (not to be confused with the loco!) collided with a goods train at Burntisland in Fife, killing 2 (the driver and fireman […]
Tonbridge, 1909 – snow, a crash, the king & a postcard
The recent snow has affected all of the UK’s transport modes to varying degrees, and the railways have been the subject of much discussion. We’ve already blogged about some of the ways in which wintery conditions were made manifest in accidents found in our database. Today it’s the turn of a single event that was […]
