This page is one of a series introducing railway staff who worked on the Llangollen and Corwen Railway before 1939 – you can find more here. We’ve tried to share more about the social history of the Railway in the past, via the people who kept it moving before preservation. Where we can we’ve looked at the individual and their wider working and family lives.
The workers featured were selected from staff who appear in the Railway Work, Life & Death project database of accidents to pre-1939 British and Irish railway employees. This worker is one of those featured in the leaflet produced collaboratively between the Llangollen and Corwen Railway and the Railway Work, Life & Death project, available at the Railway or as a PDF here.
Keeping a heritage railway running is a labour-intensive task – not least maintaining the tracks. Whilst some methods have changed since preservation, it still needs workers to keep an eye on the track. In pre-preservation days this involved gangs of track workers regularly patrolling the line and visually inspecting it, as well as carrying out all the regular periodic upkeep. This was demanding, physical work, so the route was split into sections, with one or more men responsible.
Track workers were based at key stations on a route. Sometimes they might be based in quite remote spots, between stations. One of the men who did this work in the past on the Llangollen and Corwen Railway was John Edwards.
Crossing the border
John Edwards was born at Llawnt in Shropshire on 17 April 1874. At some point he moved into Wales, as he married Catherine Davies in Corwen in 1900. Initially we’d thought that he had joined the Great Western Railway (GWR) in Ruabon in 1894, as a porter – but having considered this, we’re now not so sure.
John came to our attention as, in later 1914, he had an accident. At that point he was working as a ‘ganger’ – a track worker responsible for supervising the gang working to maintain the lines. And on the 1901 and 1911 censuses, he is shown as a track worker. Whilst not completely impossible to move across grades and roles, it feels like we might have been working with records of two different people. This makes it hard to be definitive about some aspects of John’s life.
What we do know is that in 1901, he and his wife Catherine were living in 42 Berwyn Street, Llangollen, and he was a platelayer (a type of track worker). By 1911, John and Catherine were still on Berwyn Street, but in a property in Rose Place. The two of them spoke both English and Welsh. They didn’t have any children.
Union, gang and accident
John joined the National Union of Railwaymen in May 1913, via its Ruabon branch. By this point he had been promoted to ganger, and this was noted against his grade in the Union membership book. Though Ruabon was some distance away, it looks like it was the closest location at the time with sufficient numbers of railway staff engaged enough with the Union to form their own branch.
As ganger, John would continued with the work of track maintenance, but have been responsible for the gang of men doing the work. Over a set length of the line, they would have ensured the line was straight and level as appropriate and that the track was kept in good working order. This would have included looking after drainage and keeping hedges and banks were trimmed and tidy.
One part of this work led to the accident that brought John to our attention. He features in an accident book, kept by the GWR, covering 1914. Since the late 1890s, the GWR (as all railway companies) had to keep accurate records of all staff accidents – before this, the records were rather haphazard at best. As a result of the Workmen’s Compensation Act of 1897 (on which, more here), the companies needed to report to the state details of accidents at work – and potentially to pay compensation. This meant they needed a record of what had happened to their staff.
Courtesy Peter Dickinson.
On 7 September 1914 John was working at Carrog. As he was living in Llangollen, he would likely have caught a train from Llangollen to the nearest convenient location to the start of the length of track for which he was responsible. This might not be a scheduled passenger service – likely he would have caught a goods train informally. This sort of practice was, strictly, forbidden, but the system depended upon these kinds of informal practices. They were tacitly accepted by railway company management as necessary to keep things moving, and a blind eye turned.
Couresty National Library of Scotland Maps.
At 9.15am, John’s leg was injured when it was struck by a ‘keying hammer’ – a long-handled hammer, used to knock the wooden ‘keys’ into place. These fitted between rail and ‘chair’, a metal ‘claw’ that gripped the rail and kept it in place. And that’s all that was recorded! A very brief mention, of a relatively minor accident. No doubt it was painful at the time, but with no lasting effect – he seems to have carried on working at the time.
John after the accident
The incident clearly didn’t stop John. He was still working as a GWR ganger on the 1921 Census. At that point he was living with Catherine at 4 Hill Street, Llangollen. John continued to work into the 1930s, when he was in his 60s. This was hard, physically-demanding work at any age, but all the more so for someone in his late 50s and early 60s. No doubt the regular, day-to-day strain would have taken a toll on his body, even if that wasn’t officially capture as a single, discrete moment of an accident.
John’s Union record shows him receiving superannuation (effectively retirement) at May 1939. It provided him with a payment of £25 (around £2200 in 2026) as a form of retirement benefit. On the 1939 Register he and Catherine were still living at 4 Hill Street, Llangollen, along with Catherine’s sister. John died in December 1940.
If you know more about any of the railway workers featured we’d be keen to hear from you – do please let us know.