This seems like an odd question to pose on International Workers’ Memorial Day. Surely today, if no others, is a day for remembering railway – and all – workers who have been affected by occupational accident or ill-health.
Some people do remember railway workers, and others, of course. Today I attended a minute’s silence at Portsmouth’s memorial to workers, in Victoria Park. Organised by Portsmouth Trades Council, it was a key focus for the city’s trades unions.
But in general, and during the rest of the year, most people probably don’t think about railway workers who have died or who were injured in the course of their work. As we’ve discussed in the past, if anything is remembered or marked, it tends to be passenger train crashes, like Abermule in 1921, Abbots Ripton in 1876 or Thorpe in 1874. This probably reflects the large scale, spectacular and rare nature of such incidents, as well as the ways in which those involved couldn’t influence the outcome.
If we do think about railway workers, which ones do we think about?
There are some memorials to railway workers around and about (and we’re always keen to know of more). Some of those mark navvies killed during the era of railway construction. The ornate memorial at Otley, Yorkshire, is a very visible example (and has recently been restored with help from the Railway Heritage Trust). It was constructed around the time the railway was being built, a relatively unusual occurrence, given the perceived status of navvies and the public disdain for navvies. Another, less spectacular, example of a contemporary memorial is found in Settle, Cumbria.
More recently, some efforts have been made to provide memorials to navvies. This might be in recognition of how they were regarded as expendable at the time. In part it might be a consequence of the often very difficult circumstances in which they worked and lived. Now so alien to us, it appears as a visible and fairly shocking situation which affected relatively large numbers of people in any place of major railway construction. Perhaps also because the period of navvies’ work was relatively bounded in any one location, it makes a discreet ‘event’ which can be known and marked.
The Settle and Carlisle route is a case in point. It is undoubtedly rugged and dramatic – beautiful, now. But the construction phase was brutal for those involved, with many dying. Several modern memorials have been created to try to remember these impacts, such as the ones at Chapel-le-Dale, Cowgill and Crosby Garrett. Others of these memorials are found around big structures on preserved railways, such as the plaque recently installed on Falling Sands Viaduct on the Severn Valley Railway and the plaque on Stanway Viaduct on the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway.
Construction … what about railway operation?
Ironically, for a group once deliberately overlooked, navvies now have a few memorials recognising their losses. Staff who operated the railways, however, are relatively less well-served. This might be because their deaths weren’t concentrated in particular places, but distributed across the network. They also happened over a longer period of time, potentially diminishing the perceived impact of the accidents.
This is not to say there aren’t memorials, however. Accompanying the headstone in the churchyard, at Hildenborough in Kent, a plaque was erected at the station in 2016 to mark the deaths of two track workers in 1898. On International Workers’ Memorial Day 2025 a plaque was unveiled at Hereford station. Pleasingly, some of the workers featured came from the Railway Work, Life & Death project’s database. There are also memorials on heritage railways, too. The Great Central Railway features a plaque at Quorn and Woodhouse Station, to Walter Ballard who died in an accident in July 1906.
The Railway Work, Life & Death project has also helped ensure railway staff have been remembered with permanent plaques on the mainline network marking two incidents. The first of these was at Manton, in Rutland, in which an explosion in a tunnel killed two and injured three. The most recent was at Wilmcote, Warwickshire, dedicated in March 2026. It marks the deaths of four track workers in 1922, with one plaque for each man.
As ever, we’d love to know about other memorials to railway workers we’ve not mentioned. There will be more out there. It would be excellent to be able to share them widely and ensure the people they commemorate are not forgotten.
Remembering in other ways
Formal memorials are an excellent means of bringing staff and their accidents to our attention. This is particularly so if the memorial is in a public place. But they aren’t the only way to remember, of course. Grave headstones noting accidents are significant, and we know there are many of these throughout Britain and Ireland. One famous example would be the 1840 headstones in Bromsgrove for Thomas Scaife and Joseph Rutherford. Another, perhaps less well-known, would be Edward Booth’s headstone in Hull, Yorkshire. Once again, we’d be keen to know of more.
Sometimes railway workers are remembered in much less tangible ways – through the living memories of their colleagues and family, and then through tales told after living memory fades. These are much more likely to capture the sense of the person involved, but are much more transient. They are rarely recorded in such a way to leave a lasting trace – though the Railway Work, Life & Death project blogs, with its guest contributed material, does do a little of this.
The focus of remembering is very often on the incidents which led to fatalities. For obvious reasons, these were significant, often traumatic, events in the lives of those left behind. What risks being overlooked are the incidents which produced life-changing injuries. Disability, for example, might leave a permanent physical or psychological memory of an accident. There needs to be scope to reflect on the impacts of accidents of different types and outcomes.
Remembering today … and every day
For 2026, the RMT Union has been focusing on an issue not always obvious – assault on transport workers. The current problem is bad – very bad. Between January 2024 and June 2025, over 60% of RMT members had reported experiencing some form of violence. That’s clearly unacceptable. But violence at work on the railways is also not new. Some preliminary research the Railway Work, Life & Death project has been doing has found plenty of cases of assault, dating back to at least the 1840s. Trying to reduce assault on transport workers seems like a significant and important thing to do.
International Workers’ Memorial Day provides a dedicated focal point for thinking about the many costs of work. It has a tremendous power, and can push the issue to people’s notice. However, sustaining that attention the rest of the year is a challenge. This is where efforts by the Railway Work, Life & Death project, the RMT Union, and others inside the industry and beyond, can help keep the subject in view – whether past or present. All of it helps show the sacrifices that railway staff have made over the years to keep our railways running.
Remember the dead.
Fight for the living.