On 10 November 1840, a steam locomotive named ‘Surprise’ exploded in Bromsgrove. It killed its crew, Joseph Rutherford and Thomas Scaife. The incident might perhaps…
In the UK, the heritage railway sector is an important contributor to public engagement with the past. We benefit from widespread public interest in the…
This year, the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick (MRC) celebrates its 50th anniversary. Established in 1973, it has specialised in records of…
180 years ago the Grand Junction Railway moved its major locomotive construction workshops to Crewe, in Cheshire. Whilst the town of Crewe had been growing…
One of the main causes of injury or fatality frequently recorded in the RWLD database is by ‘misadventure’. However, as anyone who has explored the…
Earlier in the year, this week’s guest author, Debbie Cameron, got in touch with us, about one of the cases featured in our new trade…
This week’s blog post comes from guest author Evan Cossburn. Evan’s post was based on cases in last year’s data release of 17,000 accidents between…
As a project, we try to make our work accessible to a wide audience – after all, the more who know about us, the better…
In this blog post we start a series, running through the rest of the year, produced by University of Portsmouth History degree students as part…
So far we’ve largely confined ourselves to the cases found in our database, to give you more detail on a small – but increasing –…