Tag: railways
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Tracing railway ancestors
The National Archives holds a vast collection of railway related material, a legacy passed down by hundreds of railway companies which operated in all corners o... read more
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From Stephenson to Suburbia: the Socio-Economic Impacts of the Coming of the Railways to the Chilterns
Using current PhD research, Rudi Newman’s talk demonstrates that for rural Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, railways had varying degrees of im... read more
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Engineering office staff
Focusing on some of the drawing and engineering offices, Tim Procter’s talk examines the personal marks that staff have left on the official records and shows... read more
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Selling the age of the train: British Rail passenger marketing and travel in Britain in the 1960s–70s
By exploring a wide range of historical records, this talk aims to tell the story of how the railways changed peoples’ lives, as well as to show how peop... read more
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Living in a railway town
Di Drummond describes the experience of living in railway towns during the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly focussing on Crewe between 1840-1914. The recor... read more
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The truth about The Great Train Robbery of 1963
It was called the crime of the century. The Great Train Robbers planned their heist pretty much flawlessly. But getting away with it was another matter. Most... read more
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Adlestrop: railways, poetry and the myths of 1914
Adlestrop by Edward Thomas is one of the nation’s favourite poems. Written in the heat of battle by an officer who was doomed not to survive the war, Adle... read more
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Researching Mr Briggs’ Hat: an account of Britain’s first railway murder
The 1864 murder of Thomas Briggs in his first-class railway carriage is investigated through documents in The National Archives, The US National Archives and Re... read more
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Railways and the mobilisation for war in 1914
The historian AJP Taylor, considering the events of 1914, once argued: ‘The First World War had begun – imposed on the statesmen of Europe by railwa... read more
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Railway disasters: an introduction
This talk looks at some of the most famous railway accidents and disasters of the 19th and 20th centuries, in particular, the disaster at Quintinshill in 1915,... read more
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Railway staff records
Historian Bruno Derrick offers guidance on how to trace ancestors who worked on the railways during the Victorian era, both at home and abroad. Discussing the e... read more