This new exhibition brings you some of the life stories of the south coast’s railway workers, from the 1850s to the 1930s. All too often it’s hard to find out much about the people who kept our railways running – but this exhibition shows us some of those people.
Find out what work was like on the railways in south-east Hampshire and West Sussex, and the sometimes extraordinary lives the staff led. Discover Walter Bridger, a signalman at Fishbourne who overcame adversity; Trayton Griffin, one of a long line of railway workers in his family; Joseph Pannell, a goods worker at Portsmouth in the 1880s who was ‘held in the highest regard by his fellow employees’; and more. You can see how they and their families fitted into their communities.
Together they give us a great understanding of railways in the past, and railway staff – very much a celebration of railway people.
Some of the feedback on the exhibition so far has said: ‘Very interesting and informative. Brought history to life’; ‘No longer just a name on a long list, the staff became real again to the reader/ descendants’
The exhibition was researched and produced as part of the Portsmouth Area Railway Pasts project, a collaboration between the University of Portsmouth’s History team, the Railway Work, Life & Death project, and the Havant Local History Group. It was funded and supported by the University of Portsmouth Centre for Excellence in Heritage Innovation.