“A serious collision occurred between two heavy goods trains at Dava on the Highland Railway, on Saturday night. The up goods train to Inverness had drawn up at Dava station to allow the down goods train from Blair Athole to pass, but when the train came up, from as yet unexplained cause, it dashed into the stationary train, causing serious damage to both trains. The driver and fireman of both engines were seriously hurt, and one of them is not expected to recover.” – Dundee Evening Telegraph 8 February 1886, p3.
This is one of the many accidents that are reported to have taken place on the Highland Main Line from the 1880s onwards. It is no exaggeration to state that working for the railway was a dirty, noisy and dangerous occupation.
Our beginning research into Blair Atholl Station lives at the time of the 1881 census has begun to uncover many such stories, which we will pass on in due course to a project, ‘Railway Work Life and Death’, a joint initiative between the University of Portsmouth, the National Railway Museum (NRM) and the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick (MRC), led by Dr Mike Esbester.