The University of Portsmouth, supported by the National Railway Museum, the University of Warwick and the RMT Union, has led a team of volunteers over the last ten years to create a database of railway accidents from 1855 to1929.  They have transposed over 69,000 railway company records held at the National Archives, detailing the accidents that people had on and around the railways.  This database has just been launched.

They are making it easier to find out about railway worker accidents in Britain and Ireland from the late 1880s to 1939. They are providing data about who was involved, what they were doing on the railways, what happened to them and why. Although today most people don’t realise it, working on the railways 100 years ago was incredibly dangerous, with hundreds killed and tens of thousands injured each year.

They have been through all the accident reports produced by the state-appointed Railway Inspectorate covering 1900-1939, the record book of the Great Eastern Railway Company’s Benevolent Fund 1913-23, and seven runs of information produced by the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants/ National Union of Railwaymen trade union between 1889 and 1920. The volunteers have extracted the details found in the documents – things like names, ages, roles, companies and details of the accident or support provided – and entered them into the database.

This database is now available free, so that anyone who’s interested can easily learn more about work and accidents on Britain and Ireland’s railways from the later 19th century until the Second World War.  The project is still ongoing with approximately a further 50,000 records to be processed.

Visit their website at:  www.railwayaccidents.port.ac.uk