Around the turn of the twentieth century, the main railway trades unions started complaining about ‘speeding up’: the intensity of work being increased, whether by…
People are absolutely central to our project. Thanks to the hard work of our volunteers, we’re able to get at the individuals behind the big…
As well as this being ‘Explore your Archive’ week (see yesterday’s post here), it’s also Road Safety Week, run by the charity Brake. Road accidents…
What place did the horse have in the steam railway? Perhaps surprisingly, a big one. Horses were essential for shunting wagons in yards and for…
April 1914 saw 2 railway accidents which raise interesting issues about the differences between worker and passenger incidents – particularly as both involved multiple casualties.…
Each case in our database is interesting (and often sad) in its own right. But one of the powerful things the database allows us to…
Last week I attended an interesting workshop at the University of Reading, looking at the history of freight transport. It touched upon all modes of…
In the cases we’ve highlighted so far on this blog, one type of railway worker has been absent: the workshop or factory employee. These were…
Volunteers working on the ‘Railway Work, Life & Death’ project have uncovered the stories of nearly 4,000 individuals who were either injured or killed whilst…