This page is one of a series introducing railway staff who worked on the south coast of England before 1939. They’ve been researched as part of the ‘Portsmouth Area Railway Pasts’ project – which you can read more about here, including accessing details of the other railway workers featured.
Research was undertaken from November 2024-July 2025, by a small group of volunteers from the Havant Local History Group, working with the University of Portsmouth’s History team. The work was funded by the University of Portsmouth’s Centre of Excellence for Heritage Innovation.
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 workers.
*** This page is under development – the full life story will be updated as soon as possible.
Hard, boring work, but in 1909 someone had to do it by hand: weeding the railway ballast (the stones the track sits on).
At Cosham, on 11 October 1909, William Miles was one of three men doing exactly this at around 3am. None of them noticed a steam engine until it was close by.
They tried to jump out of the way, but Miles was struck by the engine. Luckily it only grazed his left leg.
Why didn’t they notice the engine coming? And why were they working in such a dangerous way?
*** Further details will be uploaded shortly.