Railway Remembrances Rolling In

In the run up to this year’s Remembrance Day the National Railway Museum asked the people that were involved in keeping vital transport routes running during the Second World War to get in touch with their memories, so their rail-related recollections could be gathered for the archive.

Responses have been flooding in from all over the country, particularly from the railway towns of Doncaster and York, where the Museum is based.

The Museum plans to capture the most fascinating stories for posterity as part of the vast collection of railway history available to the public through Search Engine, the Museum’s ?multi-million archive and research centre, where people can read up about their family’s railway past.

Staff at the Museum are particularly delighted with the number of stories coming through involving women – demonstrating how wives, daughters, sisters and mothers stepped out of their traditional roles to keep the war effort literally on track in the late thirties and early forties.

Tim Procter, archivist at the NRM said: “We are receiving some really fascinating firsthand stories about the reality of life on the railways during wartime. As the Second World War slips into history, it’s vitally important that we preserve people’s memories of a Britain caught in the grip of conflict – creating yet another treasure for the public to discover during a visit to Search Engine .” -- www.nrm.org.uk