19-25 May 2025 is ‘Community Rail Week’ – an annual chance to boost the work being done to connect communities with their railways today. The community rail movement consists of 75 community rail partnerships, around 1300 station adoption or volunteer groups, and other community-led initiatives across Britain. Together they try to encourage better use of rail spaces, to improve the lives of all in that area.
Aptly, this falls in Local and Community History month, held in May each year. Just as appropriately, this year’s focus for Community Rail Week is ‘Railway 200’, encompassing rail’s past, present and future. For those who don’t know the railway history – or even just the history – of their area, this is an ideal opportunity to find out more. But how?
Many station adoption groups or community rail partnerships have a year-round focus on the heritage of their site or route. History is clearly important to them – rightly so! Some groups create interpretative panels that share the station or line’s history, or work within the wider community to produce booklets and creative responses to railway heritage.
One thing that can be missed from the stories of a line or a station is the reason the railways exist: people. They’re hugely important – but also awkward to find out much about. This is particularly the case for the railway workforce in the past, about whom often little is known, as they tended to be ordinary people deemed less worthy of attention or recording. So where might we find them?
The Railway Work, Life & Death project and Community Rail Week
A sense of community is at the heart of the Railway Work, Life & Death project. By exploring records of accidents to railway workers before 1939, available free from our project database, we can pinpoint people at a station or along a railway line. We can start to see the individuals that make up the community. We’re keen to see the community rail movement making use of our project resources to support their activities and initiatives.
Excellent, this is already happening – spurred on by Railway 200. Given one of the Railway 200 themes is ‘celebrating railway people’, having the ability to identify individuals and explore their life stories is really helpful. The Railway Work, Life & Death project database currently contains records of around 48,000 British and Irish railway workers before 1939. In June 2025 we’ll be adding a further c.69,000 records to the database.
Courtesy Southeast CRP and Danny Coope/ Street of Blue Plaques.
All of this amounts to a massive resource for anyone wanting to find some of the past railway people for their area. We’ve discussed that in this piece for Community Rail News recently. In recent months, our project has contributed to a performance at a station, produced a ‘blue plaque’ for Southeast Communities Rail Partnership, and been working with a local community group near Portsmouth on a collaborative project. It’s also a two-way flow. The Railway Work, Life & Death project blog frequently hosts guest posts, submitted by members of the community and exploring railway workers wider connections with family and community.
William Durbin – from Worcestershire to Aberdare
As an example of the someone from the Railway Work, Life & Death project database, we’ve taken William Durbin. There wasn’t anything particularly exceptional about him – but that makes him more significant, as he’s more representative of the majority. He was born in around 1884, in Old Swinford, Worcestershire.
As is often the case, he didn’t leave much trail in the documentary record – and the records he did leave are somewhat contradictory. He appears to have joined the Great Western Railway in Stourbridge in 1900. But by 1903 he was dead, killed in an accident at work, age 19 – or 21, depending which source you trust.
Courtesy National Library of Scotland Maps.
On 21 May 1903 he was working as a signal fitter’s labourer, at Aberdare station in Wales. He was under the supervision of J Edwards, at Dare Junction. They were boarding over some signal wires which ran between different railway lines. This was a safety measure introduced in 1902, to prevent a trip hazard. It had just been introduced, forced upon the railway companies by the state, in a relatively unusual move.
Ironically, then, this safety measure was to lead to an accident. Edwards and Durbin were so engaged in their work that they failed to notice a train pushing 14 wagons towards them. Unfortunately Durbin ‘was knocked down, and so injured that he died the same day.’ The state-appointed investigator, Amos Ford, concluded that traffic was light on the Bwllfa colliery branch and so Durbin and Edwards should have heard the train coming. Ford did note that noise from a train on an adjacent track might have masked the sound of the approaching wagons.
That wasn’t the end of the story, however. The coroner at Durbin’s inquest censured the goods guard, James John, in charge of the train which hit Durbin. He was supposed to ride in the leading wagon – no guard’s van was provided – to keep watch for obstructions on the line. He said he didn’t see Edwards and Durbin – but he was clearly asked if he had been reading a newspaper at the time. As a result the inquest jury found Durbin’s death to be accidental, but noted that ‘we are not yet satisfied with the look-out kept by the guard, yet we do not consider that his neglect was criminal.’
What next?
William Durbin’s short story tells us about life and work on the railways in the past. We can see what he was doing and why, including where that fitted within a wider context of accidents to railway workers. We can see co-workers, and the risks they were all expected to take in order to earn a living. And we can see something of the local community in Aberdare, via the coroner’s inquest.
Clearly this would only be a starting point, and we would want to find out more about Durbin and his domestic and community life. Magnify these tasks up over the other Aberdare railway staff, or colleagues and friends elsewhere, and it’s possible to build a strong picture of life in your area. This includes people who aren’t usually written into the historical narrative. There’s real potential here for the community rail movement to get involved – and we’d love to see that happen and to help! We’re very open to supporting community rail groups to make use of the Railway Work, Life & Death project, so just get in touch.