Looking back at Shildon Works

June 2024 saw the 40^th anniversary of the closure of Shildon Works, in County Durham. The closure, in 1984, hit Shildon hard, with the loss of nearly 3000 jobs. Railway vehicle construction had taken place in some form in Shildon since at least the 1830s, and possibly longer. The site of the early workshops for the Stockton and Darlington Railway, railway and town were closely connected until 1984.

 

Some of the Works buildings still survive now, but in different industrial use; how far is Shildon’s community still connected to its railway past? For some, that connection is clearly present and maintained – particularly those who were employed at the Works. The Shildon Railway Institute remains active, including in promoting the town’s railway heritage. This year it organised a gathering to mark the 40^th anniversary of the Works’ closure, including this excellent online exhibit and accompanying booklet. Locomotion, a part of the Science Museum Group, is also based in Shildon. Whilst not on the Works’ site, it ensures Shildon’s railway past remains part of its present and future, albeit as a heritage attraction rather than a working environment.

 

Shildon and the Railway Work, Life & Death project

Making the most of the living memory of the Works is hugely important. Equally important is the ability to recognise and find out more about those workers and working practices out of living memory. It will help keep people connected with that much longer railway heritage. It will make visible individuals and their working conditions, as well as their wider relationships to their families and communities.

One of the routes to this is through accident records. They provide a documentary trace which can serve as a starting point to finding out more about the individuals involved. We can once again see the person. There’s a powerful collaborative potential, too. We’d love to be able to work with people and groups in Shildon, together finding out more about the Shildon-based employees who appear in the Railway Work, Life & Death project database of staff accidents.

On top of all of the practical challenges to this, there’s a particular issue, however. The records which survive rarely detail staff accidents in railway workshops. We’ve detailed the reasons for this elsewhere, in this blog post. Nevertheless, it is possible to find Shildon cases in our database, including the following people.

 

George William McDowell

On 14 March 1912, George William McDowell, 36, was working as a wagon erector’s helper at the Works. At this point McDowell was employed by the North Eastern Railway (NER) company. McDowell was going to fetch some iron stored near one of the Works sidings, using a two-wheeled bogie. He needed to cross the siding to do so – there wasn’t enough room between the siding and the adjacent shed to allow him to use the side of the line he actually wanted to. However, his way was blocked by a number of other men, also waiting to get some iron. McDowell went to see what was causing the blockage and stopping all of the men from crossing the siding.

 

There were 10 wagons in the siding, blocking the mens’ route. Two of the workmen moved eight of the wagons enough to create a gap five feet wide. This would have allowed the men to take the bogies across the siding, to the iron. However, as McDowell crossed a loco inadvertently closed the wagons up. McDowell ‘was caught between the leading vehicle and a bogie’. His foot and his body were crushed, but he survived.

Railway Inspector Charles Campbell investigated the accident, for the state. Rather than attributing the accident to carelessness, he saw a key issue was procedural. There was no safe practice in use to ensure that wagons couldn’t be move when men were crossing the siding. Perhaps more importantly, he saw the infrastructure as inadequate. There wasn’t enough space for workers to wheel their bogies between track and shed on the side that they wanted to. This meant they were forced to use the opposite side of the track, and cross the line. Issues with lack of clearances causing accidents at Shildon had been investigated by the Railway Inspectorate before McDowell’s incident.

 

Unusually, the NER representative at the enquiry made a proactive suggestion for a physical change. He offered that, if the siding were reduced in length by 30 feet, it would remove the need for men to cross a line. Campbell was content with this idea and felt ‘no doubt it will be adopted by the Company’ (1912 Quarter 1, Appendix C). We don’t know if the NER did do this, however.

We know relatively little about McDowell the man, unfortunately. Born in 1875, he led quite a varied career, according to Census returns. In 1891 he was a miner. By 1901 he was a builder’s clerk, and had married his wife, Annie; they had two children, Edgar and Florence. On the 1911 Census he was a wood working machinist for a colliery. Beyond that, we know little else. How did he come to be working on the railway? How did he recover from his accident? Did he remain on the railway, or move on again?

 

Thomas Marley (1869-1918)

Thomas Marley appears in one of the runs of data included as part of our trade union update. Unfortunately for him, he is found in the ‘Inquests’ data. The National Union of Railwaymen (NUR) kept records that related to their members. This included when the NUR sent a representative to an inquest, to try to safeguard a member’s interests. This was clearly felt necessary after Marley’s death.

Marley was a member of the Shildon No. 2 branch of the NUR. He was a railway blacksmith. On 13 February 1918, he was recorded as having been involved in an accident, which was to kill him. Details are limited, but it appears to have been a crush injury, incurred at Shildon Wagon Shops. He appears to have been single, in 1911 still living with his engine driver father.

 

Norman Ruddam

Bolt heater Norman Ruddam, 16, was injured on 13 January 1919. Again, we know this from the NUR records – he too was a member of Shildon No. 2 branch. It seems incredible that quite serious injuries could generate so little documentary trail, but this was quite common. The accidents were still too common to merit any real interest from the authorities or wider public. The bare details of the case feature in the trade union record; Ruddam’s eye was injured, and he was awarded 17/6 per week, until the resumed work on 22 September 1919.

On the 1911 Census he was living at home with his parents. He joined the NUR in 1918; this opened up the possibilities of support from the Union. We still don’t know if he continued to live at home or if he sought alternative accommodation.

 

Conclusion

The process of researching cases such as these three men employed and hurt at Shildon Works evidently isn’t straightforward. They tend to be people who leave limited documentary trace in the formal record. This only makes community-based and collaborative work more important. Do the descendants of George, Thomas and Norman still live in Shildon? Might they be able to share more details of their wider lives, with their families and in the community of Shildon? Even if we can’t uncover more detail, the fact that we can name the people involved and provide a bit of their life story is significant. Without it, would they be remembered at all?