GNR 'Conditions of Admission to the Service' for new clerks- 1856 - Part 1

As many of you are aware, I have a number of obsessions when it comes to railway history. Clerks are one, and rule books are another (Beer trains are also high on the list - naturally). Therefore, imagine the joy I had when flicking through my Great Northern Railway rule book from 1856, when I came a cross the 'Conditions of Admission to the Service' for all the company's new clerks. Two obsessions satisfied in one place - I couldn't ask for more. The first part of the 'conditions' were related to the clerks' pay, as follows:-

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1.Candidates for employment can join the service only in one of the following classes, viz
           Experienced Clerk Class. - Nominated by the General Manager
           Junior Clerk and Lad Clerk Class -Nominated by the Directors in turn

2. Experienced Clerks. - A candidate as an Experienced Clerk must posses railway experience, or experience in other traffic equivalent thereto.
          The salary not exceeding £80 per annum, is fixed on appointment.

3. Junior Clerks. - A candidate as a Junior Clerk must have attained 18, and must not exceed 23 years of age.
The salary on appointment, and -

For the 1st Year is ...               ...                21s per week
     "      2nd           ...               ...               22s       "
     "      3rd           ...               ...                23s       "
     "      4th           ...               ...                24s       "
     "      5th, and until promoted                   25s       "

If employed in London, but during such employment only, 4s a week are allowed in addition to the salary.

A Junior Clerk is eligible for promotion only on a vacancy occurring, and upon the head of the department in which he has been employed, and the General Manager, recommending him as qualified to fill the same.

4. Lad Clerks. - A candidate as Lad Clerk must have attained 15, and must not exceed 18, years of age.

The salary on appointment, and -


For the 1st Year is ...               ...                10s per week
     "      2nd           ...               ...               11s       "
     "      3rd           ...               ...                13s       "
     "      4th, and until promoted                   16s       "

A Lad clerk is ineligible for promotion to be a Junior Clerk until he is 18 years of age, and then only upon a vacancy occurring, and upon the head of the department in which he has been employed, and the General Manager, recommending him as qualified to fill the same.

5. All Clerks, without reference to their standing in the service, are allowed 4s a week, in addition to their pay, when employed wholly on night duty.

6. Written application at the end of year of service must be made to the directors through the medium of the superintendent of the line, or chief of the department in which the Clerk is engaged, for the authorised increase of salary, and failing such application at the proper time, increased pay will be allowed only from the date of which it is eventually made. This rule applies also to the Police and Porters.


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Part 2 to come on Saturday

PhD Historiography Snippet - Forward Planning by Railway Companies

The Midland Railway's St. Pancras Station

Numerous historians have touched on the lack of accurate forward planning in railway companies’ investment policies in the nineteenth century. Irving argued that in the 1870s the NER’s investment was higher than the line’s traffic demanded and in the 1880s only kept pace with it. Consequently, with traffic increasing rapidly in the late 1880s, investment policies failed by 1888 as network capacity was inadequate.[1] Hodgkins argued that Sir Edward Watkin’s attempted expansion of the small Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway in the1880s added lines that were ‘too much for it to digest’. Ultimately these extensions were expensive failures as they were 'not properly weighed up as investment opportunities.'[2] 

Channon’s study of the Midland Railway’s extension to London in 1869 provided the most detail on what decision-makers knew when formulating a major policies. He argued that those who made the decision, the General Manager and a small group of directors, could not be considered traditional ‘profit maximisers’ as their ‘knowledge of costs revenues, and alternatives was either too rudimentary or too incomplete to form the basis of accurate profit forecasts.’ Indeed, construction costs, especially in London, were particularly hard to predict.[3] Therefore, if Channon's assessment of the knowledge Midland Railway decision-makers' had is applied to the cases above, it suggests that those directing policy within nineteenth century railway companies possessed rudimentary information regarding the cost of, and potential revenues from, their ventures.

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[1] Irving, R.J., The North Eastern Railway Company, (Leicester, 1976)  , p.166

[2] Hodgkins, David, The Second Railway King: The Life and Times of Sir Edward Watkin, (Melton Priory, 2002)  , p.486

[3] Channon, Geoffrey, Railways in Britain and the United States, 1830-1940: Studies in Economic and Business History, (Aldershot, 2001), p.107

Which Railway Employees Suffered the most Accidents in 1888?

Accidents to railway workers were very common in the Victorian period, and most safety legislation was passed to protect the passenger, rather than the employee. A Board of Trade report on accidents in 1888 stated that out of the 346,426 individuals engaged in railway companies' Traffic, Locomotive, Engineering and Stores Departments,  346 were killed and 2,193 were injured. However, different grades of employee were affected to different extents, and the table shows the proportion of individuals in each grade who were victims of an accident (sorted by the proportionate fatality rate):

Clearly, individuals working  with the physical movement of rolling stock, the Brakesmen, Goods Guards and Shunters, suffered the greatest proportion of accidents.  Furthermore, both in terms of fatalities and injuries, station-based staff, such as Ticket Collectors, Station-Masters and Porters, were in the bottom half of the table. Thus, this evidence would suggest strongly (and let us face it, this probably didn't need pointing out) that where you worked on the Victorian railway affected your chance of being in an accident. The closer you were to a 'moving part', putting you at greater risk.

Pictures of St. Pancras - 20th and 21st April

As many of you are probably aware by now, on Friday and Saturday I was in Derby. As part of my trip I had to travel to and from the beautiful St. Pancras Station. These were some of the photos I took:

Waiting Room Weekly Round-Up

This week I have been very busy with work. However, on Friday and Saturday I attended the Archives, Artefacts, Amateurs and Academics conference Derby run by the Historical Model Railway Society and the Business Archives Council. Some of my initial thoughts were given in Friday's 'Waiting Room' post. However, my full conference report is to be found on the main Turnip Rail Blog today.

So here's the round-up:

Monday: The First London and Birmingham Railway Advert - 1837
Tuesday: What Happened to Families Whose Houses were in the Railway's Path?
Wednesday: The Hole in the Wall - Victoria Station's Signalbox and Dickens
Thursday: The Membership of the Railway Executive Committee in World War One
Friday: Archives, Artefacts, Amateurs and Academics

And don't forget my main Turnip Rail Post - Archives, Artefacts, Amateurs and Academics - A Conference Report

Archives, Artefacts, Amateurs and Academics

As I write, I am on a train winging my way to Derby. Why, I hear you ask? I am attending an important conference entitled ‘Archives, Artefacts, Amateurs and Academics’ run by the Historical Model Railway Society (HMRS) and the Business Archives Council (BAC). Honestly, all the delegates are going into the unknown on this one.

The purpose of the conference is to explore issues surrounding railway archives. One thing I hope will be touched on is the inescapable fact that the average age of the railway enthusiast is rising and many are, sadly, passing on. Yet, the majority of these departing enthusiasts have, across a lifetime of dedication to the railways, collected large collections of archival material from the railways of the past. So, the conference is hoping to address the issue of what happens to these archives when these people pass on. Is there a framework that can be put into place? How do we avoid document collections being thrown in the bin by enthusiasts’ families who, through no fault of their own, have no knowledge of their value to railway and business historians? Additionally, how do we promote amongst the general public the idea that railway documents can be found homes and there are archives willing to take them?

Secondly, we will be discussing individuals’ personal document collections in the context of these archives. For example, how would the family of a deceased individual approach an archive to have the material stored? Would the archive even want the material? Indeed, when railway collections are accessioned into stock, how is this made known to historians? Therefore, the conference is not just bringing together railway enthusiasts and academics; it is also being attended by archive and museum professionals to get their input.

Ultimately, there is a lot of work to be done today and tomorrow, and I look forward to tackling some of these challenges. We don’t know what the product of the conference will be, but I am very sure that it will be the start of something big. Throughout the next two days I will be tweeting interesting points from the conference using the hashtag #AAAA2012. Please use it and hopefully what comes out of the conference will stimulate discussion and debate. Additionally, on Sunday I will post a full conference report from my perspective. So, get on board…

The Membership of the Railway Executive Committee in World War One

Herbert Ashcombe Walker

The Railway Executive Committee was the organisation that took over and operated Britain's railways in the two world wars.  In the First World War it consisted entirely of the railway industry's leading general managers and was the natural conclusion of eighty-nine years of the rise of its management class. Indeed, the directors of railway companies, which had dominated the organisation of the early railways, were not represented. In 1914 the members of the REC were as follows:

Herbert Ashcombe Walker (Chairman) - London and South Western Railway
Sir Sam Fay (Deputy Chairman) - Great Central Railway
Donald Alexander Matheson - Caledonian Railway
Francis Dent - South Eastern and Chatham Railway
Frank Potter - Great Western Railway
Sir Robert Turnbull - London and North Western Railway
John Audley Frederick Aspinall - Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway
Sir Guy Granet - Midland Railway
Sir Alexander Kaye Butterworth - North Eastern Railway
Charles Dent - Great Northern Railway
William Forbes - London, Brighton and South Coast Railway