REMEMBERING THE DEAD

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: january 2019 :: RMTnews 22 S t Pancras International station’s rail community and artist Fabian Peake unveiled a four-metre tall tribute ahead of centenary of Armistice Day in November 1918. The artwork is inspired by the 178 Hotel and Goods Yards staff that worked at St Pancras Station that died in World War One. The Midland Railway Company based in Derby employed 66,839 people in 1907, of which 21,941 enlisted to fight on the Western Front. During the course of the conflict, 2,833 Midland Railway Company employees lost their lives. Some railway workers were considered essential to the war effort and their roles identified as ‘Reserved Occupations’ which meant they were exempt from conscription later in the war. St Pancras International unveiled its permanent war memorial on its 150th anniversary and the centenary of the Armistice on November 11 1918, when all nations had agreed to stop fighting while the terms of peace were negotiated. The war formally came to an end on June 28, 1919, when Germany and the Allied Nations (including Britain, France, Italy and Russia) signed the Treaty of Versailles. The memorial sits on St Pancras International’s Grand Terrace, close to the location of bomb damage from two prominent air raids on the station in 1918 and 1941 - the first of which claimed the greatest number of casualties suffered in any air raid on a London station during the First World War. The artwork will also mark the location of the annual Armistice memorial held at the station each November 11. Artist Fabian Peake was selected to design the memorial for demonstrating a clear engagement with the public and a creative approach to the brief. “When I discovered the Midland Railway Book of Remembrance, I was fascinated with the list of occupations. “It really brought home that these were ordinary people, just like you and me, doing jobs that we still do today but they went to war and did not return. “I’m delighted to have been selected to design this important memorial and hope that the piece will show that one hundred years on, we are all still remembering those who fought in the World Wars,” he said. REMEMBERING THE DEAD Permanent war memorial unveiled at St Pancras International