Railway 200 – researching our railway pasts

By now, hopefully you’ll be aware of ‘Railway 200’ – a partnership campaign marking 200 years of railway travel since the Stockton & Darlington Railway in 1825. It’s going to see a huge range of events and activities throughout 2025, across the UK, linking past, present and future. One of the brilliant things about it is the huge potential for public involvement and engagement with our railway pasts. And of course we’re keen to see the Railway Work, Life & Death project to contribute!

During the year there’ll be an exhibition train, touring the network, and events in communities, on the railway system and at heritage railways. It’s great to see how this is being set up as something anyone and everyone can participate in, in some form. Anyone can organise an activity, and register it with the Railway 200 organisers, who will then help promote it and ensure it reaches the widest audience.

There are four themes around which Railway 200 initiatives will revolve: skills and education; innovation, technology and environment; heritage, culture and tourism; and celebrating railway people. They’re designed to be inclusive, and to ensure that everyone and everything with a railway connection can find a place. We can certainly see the Railway Work, Life & Death project contributing to the railway people and heritage, culture and tourism strands, though it has much to say to the others, too.

Given our project’s connections with Higher Education – one of our co-leads, Mike Esbester, is a History lecturer at the University of Portsmouth – it’s useful to mention the potential for academic historians to feed into Railway 200. They do cutting-edge, original research, with the potential to bring new insights and approaches to public audiences. Mike is acting as Railway 200 Academic Liaison, to ensure these connections are made. There’s more on this in this recent discussion, part of the Institute of Historical Research Transport & Mobility History seminar series.

 

Railway Work, Life & Death and Railway 200

Thinking more widely, there’s huge potential for any people or organisations with a railway interest to get involved. Railways are really well placed in the public imagination, generating substantial interest and enthusiasm. Railway 200 is an excellent opportunity to capitalise on existing interest, as well as generating new. And we want the Railway Work, Life & Death project to be a part of this!

So how might we contribute? There are the direct routes, where we might put on an event like a talk, or contribute to the Railway 200 public interpretation. But there are also the more diffuse routes, where other people make use of our free resources, including our database of accidents to British and Irish railway workers before 1939. People already do this in their family and local history research, for example, incorporating information and understanding from the Railway Work, Life & Death project into what they do. We’d love to see more of this, in general and for Railway 200 specific work.

Our project can contribute to this in different ways. The accident reports tell us about the people involved in accidents, what happened to them and why. They’re rich in railway detail, including about what was actually happening ‘on the ground’ – something it’s often hard to find information on. Information found in trade union records gives us more insight into the impacts of accidents and how they affected people, often in lasting ways. We can see how railway work affected particular spaces and places, too, helping us better appreciate the local histories of our railways.

Looking at individual cases, then, we can see the people behind the accidents. And cumulatively, looking at multiple cases, we can understand working life on the railways in the past – including the dangers.

It’s important that we recognise the difficult aspects of railways in the past – and indeed, the present. This might be uncomfortable, but it’s vital. Some of this can no doubt be couched in terms of the distance travelled and improvements made. However, we need to do more than just put a positive gloss on things. Railway work for many was – and is – dirty, difficult and dangerous. We must remember and respect that. The Railway Work, Life & Death project allows us to see those impacts, and to think about how they might be made public. This is something we’ve already been thinking about, discussed in this blog post.

 

A Railway 200 community research agenda?

For whatever reason people come to the Railway Work, Life & Death project – and there are many – we’d hope that for Railway 200, people and organisations will explore what the project has to offer. Even better, we’d love to see more research into the people and cases in our database.

Excellently, this has already started! It might be for a local initiative, focusing on a particular location. We’ve seen this with the Lickey Rail Group, looking at staff accidents in the Bromsgrove area. Or it might be a result of a personal interest. Within 12 hours of this blog post being published, we’d had one of the project volunteers, Peter Robinson, select a railway worker accident from his local area and research it – including possibly locating descendants of the worker. He’s written this up as a blog post, available here.

It would be wonderful to see that research reaching and involving its local community, or even the descendants of the railway workers who appear in the project database. That might be via a talk, a leaflet, a temporary exhibition – or even research that could be fed into your local museum’s permanent display. Would your local Community Rail Partnership be interested? It helps to fill in the railway history of the area. Might your local history society be able to put up a ‘blue plaque’ to an overlooked past resident of the area, a railway worker? There are all sorts of ways the Railway Work, Life & Death project’s resources can act as a starting point and help contribute to your community.

Equally, we’d welcome guest posts on the project blog. It’s a great place to share your research with a wider audience. With your help, might we be able to feature one blog post per week, across 2025, written by a guest author and exploring people, places and cases from the Railway Work, Life & Death project database? Might they focus on cases from 1925 (as the accident records don’t go back to 1825!), or even at a push 1875 (as we will have some earlier cases from the 1870s to come)?

Alternatively, we’re always open to blog posts about people not in our database. Our project can’t be comprehensive, as there were, sadly, far too many accidents to railway staff for which records either didn’t exist or haven’t survived. Maybe an ancestor who worked on the railways had an accident and the Railway Work, Life & Death project can provide a space for you to tell their story.

Individuals might research one person of particular interest to them. Collectively, groups such as local history organisations might explore a number of cases in their area, building up a picture of railway work and community in that place. Railway enthusiasts or those currently in the railway industry might look at people and accidents of particular relevance to them. In essence, there are a lot of possibilities to make use of the project and our work. We’re always happy to discuss possible collaborations, so please get in touch – and do let us know if you make use of Railway Work, Life & Death project data or resources.

 

Stockton & Darlington cases: Darlington and Shildon

To demonstrate the potential for the Railway Work, Life & Death project to aid our understanding of Britain and Ireland’s railway past, we thought we’d focus on a few cases from the project database. And given the Railway 200 connection, we thought we’d focus on the Stockton & Darlington Railway.

There are hundreds of cases in the project database that took place at or involved railway workers based at the places on the Stockton & Darlington’s route. We’ve already looked at a few of them in previous blog posts – here around the site of Hopetown Darlington, and here around Shildon works.

 

Stockton & Darlington cases: Robert Arnett, Stockton

To conclude this post, we’ve looked at two previously unexamined accidents in Stockton. Hopefully they’ll help demonstrate the potential that our project holds for improving understanding about railway work in the past, and wider relevance. The first of these concerns Robert Arnett.

Robert Arnett was born in Stockton in 1861, to Robert (senior) and Margaret Arnett. Throughout his life, Robert lived in Stockton. By 1871 his father had died; by 1881 Robert had married Sarah Ann and they had had their first child, William Oliver. Robert was recorded on the 1881 Census as being a railway goods guard, so his associated with the railway had started. He appeared as a guard/ goods guard on each subsequent census.

In 1890 he joined the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (ASRS, later National Union of Railwaymen, NUR), via its Stockton branch. The 1891 Census records the family as consisting of five children, as well as Robert and Sarah. By 1901 two of the children were no longer present – both were over 14, so might have moved away into employment elsewhere. Of those remaining, the youngest was still at school, but the elder two were both employed on the railway – William as a signalman’s assistant, and Robert (junior junior!) as a clerk in the engine works.

From at least 1901, the family was living at 7 Malakoff Street in Stockton – the address Robert and Sarah were recorded at in the 1911 and 1921 censuses. They were living cheek by jowl with the railway: Malakoff street abutted the railway, by Stockton station. By 1911, the family had been enlarged by another daughter, Lilian, by that point aged 9. The youngest child on the 1901 Census, John, was by 1911 an engine fitter’s assistant. The railway was an integral part of Robert’s family.

 

Robert Arnett’s accidents

So much for a brief biographical background to Robert Arnett. He appears in the Railway Work, Life & Death project database on two occasions. The first is through the ASRS non-fatal compensation records. On 13 December 1911 he was involved in an incident described as a ‘collision.’ Presumably a train he working was struck or hit by another train, whilst Robert was in the guard’s van. Elsewhere in this run of records this is certainly what is meant by the term collision. The nature of Robert’s injuries were only given as ‘face and scalp wounds’; he was off work until 29 April 1912. The ASRS secured him 18/10 (around £120 in today’s terms) per week compensation from the NER for that period.

 

It’s entirely possible that Robert had other accidents besides this one, but for which the documentary record hasn’t survived. What we do know is that Robert appears one more time in the project database. By this time the NER had been absorbed into the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER). In the early hours of 3 January 1929, his shift was coming to an end in Stockton. He was told to place eight wagons in the repair sidings. He finished that task and sent the engine he’d been working with back to the depot whilst he finished making the site secure. Owing to an earlier derailment, however, the engine couldn’t reach the depot via the normal route. As a result, it ended up being driven back along the line it had just come from. Robert ‘who would have no reason to suspect that the engine would be returning that way’ was bending down over the line. He was hit by the engine’s tender, and fell with his left leg over the rail. He ‘received severe injuries to which he succumbed shortly afterwards.’

The accident was investigated by Inspector JLM Moore, who attributed it to misadventure. However, he made the point that ‘it emphasises […] the need for being constantly no the alert for unexpected movements which may result from unforeseen circumstances instead of relying on a knowledge of what may be considered the usual procedure.’ Interestingly, he went on to criticise the procedures in place at this location. The sidings concerned were kept locked with a padlock, with the key being held at the nearby signal box. The problem was that if employees were working in the sidings there was nothing to prevent someone else unlocking access and moving a train into the same space – a potential danger to those not expecting anything to be moving in those sidings. Moore suggested that whilst work was taking place in the siding, ‘the key should be held by some responsible member of the repair staff’ (1929 Quarter 1, Appendix B).

A few more details emerge from the brief press reports of Robert’s death. The Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail recorded that Robert was found ‘lying unconscious at the side of the line’ by a railwayman passing the site. He was taken to Stockton hospital, but died five hours later. Robert’s address was given as 77 Leven Road, Norton (a part of Stockton). The Football Gazette and Telegraph noted the inquest verdict was ‘accidental death.’

We don’t know how much compensation was paid to Sarah, Robert’s widow. It seems likely that some would have been granted – but given she was, by 1929, the only clear dependent, it might have been a relatively low payment. Robert and Sarah’s daughter, Lilian, was living with them on the 1921 Census, but she was working at that point, and later married in 1924. Sarah appeared on the 1939 Register, still living at 77 Leven Road – along with Lilian and her family. Whether Lilian and her husband, and later family, had been living with her parents all the time before the accident, or they moved in after Robert’s death isn’t clear. It does demonstrate how family ties were important in later life.

By looking at the records from within the Railway Work, Life & Death project in this way, and linking them with wider sources, we can start to build a picture of one man’s life story. There would have been much else, of course, that wasn’t captured in formal records – his social life, any community ties, and what Robert was like at a personal level. Sometimes it is possible to see this, particularly when we hear from descendants. Whilst we have an incomplete picture, it is still valuable. We can see working practices and family life. If we scale this up across all of the women and men featured in the database, we have huge potential to start to see very ordinary people from the past in a more rounded way.

 

Stockton & Darlington cases: Mrs Fenwick, gender and railway work at Stockton

The majority of cases in the Railway Work, Life & Death database record accidents to men. We’ve thought about why that might be in this blog post. However, there are increasing numbers of women appearing, particularly in the trade union data and in future data releases. Interestingly, two of the women featured in the database at the moment had a Stockton connection.

Firstly, Jane Horner, featured in our original run of data and discussed more in this blog post. Secondly, the death of ‘Mrs Fenwick’, as she was recorded in the trade union dataset. We’ve not looked at her case before, and in looking at it for this post, spotted an intriguing issue. We think this shows another way that the project data – and asking some interesting questions – can help us better understand railway work and indeed wider British society.

We have relatively limited personal information about Mrs Fenwick. Unfortunately we’ve been unable to confirm her details. We can’t be sure we’ve found her on the census and other records, but we think she might have been Sylvia Fenwick. We can’t find marriage details, and so have been unable to track down her husband or any other family members. (The Union records were reasonably consistent about recording ‘Miss/ Mrs’ for the women members, so it’s probable she was indeed married.)

The name Sylvia Fenwick doesn’t tally with an NUR membership register entry, but we know that she was a member. She joined at some point during or shortly after the First World War – one of many thousands of women who joined the railway industry at this time. Women were allowed to join the NUR starting in 1915, and hence start to appear in Union records at this time. We’ve written more about this in this blog post.

We know relatively little about Mrs Fenwick’s accident. This is a result of two factors. Firstly, as we haven’t been able to find other records, such as newspaper reports, which often provide more detail, we only have the information in the Union records. Secondly, those Union records only gave relatively limited information so far as an accident or other incident affected its members – essentially what was needed to provide an overview of activities.

Mrs Fenwick appears in the ‘Fatal compensation’ records for the NUR. She was a member of the Stockton branch, recorded as a North Eastern Railway (NER) lampwoman. On 28 February 1919 she was knocked down and killed. Her dependents received £40 in compensation (around £2,300 in 2024) from the NER. Against her name is a noted that this was ‘settled’, which suggests that there was some debate about the compensation, possibly including relatives arguing for more.

And here’s the rub. When we saw that figure of £40, we thought it looked quite scarce. Sometimes the relatives of male workers with no dependents received a tokenistic payment of £10 to cover funeral costs. Perhaps Mrs Fenwick had no children – but why £40 and not £10? The railway companies were averse to ‘unnecessary expenditure’, so it’s unlikely to have been a sense of generosity.

 

Gender and accident compensation

We thought we’d have a look at the database and see what men in a similar role to Mrs Fenwick might have received. Of the four lampmen in the fatal compensation records (all of whom died in 1919), the dependents of three received £300 (around £17,000 now), the maximum pay-out. The other received £100 (around £5,700). That’s quite a difference to the £40 paid to Mrs Fenwick’s dependents. Was women’s work – and a woman’s life – worth less than a man’s?

Possibly. Probably. Looking at the seven Stockton deaths in the same run of data, between 1907 and 1920, six were deaths of men. Their dependents received between £68-300 in compensation, with four of them receiving over £240. A very instinctive response, borne from familiarity with the data, suggests that in the event of a fatality the dependents of railwaywomen received less compensation than those of railwaymen.

Indeed, in the ‘fatal compensation’ data six women appear. Their dependents received between £10 (in two instances; explicitly recorded as for ‘funeral expenses’) and £300 (in one case only). Only two dependents received more that £55. Whilst more work would need to be done to say so conclusively, it looks like the dependents of male railway workers received more compensation after their death. This would appear to suggest that men’s work and lives were valued differently to women’s.

If this was the case, it might have reflected the relative position of women in British society at this time. Given a great many (though by no means all) railwaywomen joined the industry during the First World War, they were seen as a temporary expedient. As such, their work was perhaps valued less. In addition, might they have been seen only as supplementing the male breadwinner wage, so not providing the substantive income for their households? And thus the loss of their wage was believed less of an impact, so could be treated less favourably?

 

Railway Work, Life & Death and wider society

Without further exploration – of Railway Work, Life & Death project records and of railway company records – it’s not possible to be conclusive about the differences in treatment of railwaywomen’s and railwaymen’s accidents. However, this line of investigation allows us to think about the nature of railway work and how it was gendered – and how railways tied into wider society.

We’re keen to see the greatest possible range of historians interrogating the project dataset – railway historians, of course, including for Railway 200 as well as beyond, but others, too. Social historians, labour historians, gender historians, local historians, family historians, cultural historians … there’s huge potential for what’s in the project to inform understandings of the past in all sorts of ways.

So, all are invited to view the Railway Work, Life & Death dataset and come with your questions. They’ll be very different to each other, and to the questions we as a project might be asking – but that’s a strength. We’d love to know what questions you’re asking, and if/ how the dataset helps you, so please let us know!