RUNNING COSTS

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: november/december 2022 :: RMTnews 18 For most of the last 200 years there has been little public interest in staff safety on the railways. That means many tens of thousands of workers were injured or even killed whilst doing their jobs and they were simply seen as part of the price of keeping the railway network moving. They were very literally running costs. Many of these men and women led ordinary lives and left little trace in the history books. You’d struggle to find out much about them – until now. The ‘Railway Work, Life & Death’ project has just made it easier to find out more about some of the railway staff who were involved in an incident at work on Britain and Ireland’s railways before 1939. Our excellent volunteer teams have been busy transcribing official accident investigation reports, produced by the Railway Inspectorate at the time. They tell us what was going on, who was involved, where and when. We’ve just added a further 16,000 casualties to our project database, bringing the total to around 21,000 individuals. Our project wants to makes sure these, and many more, railway workers who were injured or killed whilst doing their jobs are remembered. We’re a collaboration, between the University of Portsmouth, the National Railway Museum and the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick (MRC). The MRC holds the RMT’s archives – some of which we’ll be bringing into the project in the future, thanks to RMT support. We see key issues through the incidents in the cases: organisational change, like the merging of 120 companies into the ‘Big Four’ in 1923; pressure on workloads and time allowed to do jobs; bigger and faster machines being introduced into a system not designed for them; RUNNING COSTS Dr Mike Esbester reveals new database detailing accidents at work stretching back over a hundred years Comment on the impact of the Second World War upon working practices, from the Railway Review of June 18, 1943.