British Railways in World War One

Excellent little travelling exhibition currently at Charing Cross Station looking at the railways in the First World War.

In a small but well-presented stand the exhibition covered every aspect you could think of from the men who went to war, the women who worked in their place, their role in transporting troops to the front and sadly also back in ambulance trains. 

There were a few original items in cases but mainly the story was told with text and photographs. There were features on two men who won the Victoria Cross, Ernest Sykes and Wilfred Wood, both of whom survived and had steam trains named after them.

One incident I’d not known about was Britain’s worst railway disaster was in 1915 at Quintinshill near Gretna where 225 people were killed including Royal Scots soldiers on their way to the Gallipoli campaign.

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