Collaborative working with challenging histories: the Railway Work, Life & Death project

Baker, Karen; Esbester, Mike

Collaborative working with challenging histories: the Railway Work, Life & Death project

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Journal article

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Baker, Karen

Esbester, Mike

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Date published

December 16, 2025

Abstract

This paper reflects upon notions of value for research collaborations with differing stakeholder agendas and suggests modes of working that could be useful to other academic/Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museum (GLAM) collaborations. It focuses on the Railway Work, Life & Death project, a collaboration between the National Railway Museum, University of Portsmouth and a number of other institutions. It demonstrates the benefits that meaningful, long-term collaboration can provide to those involved, and to wider stakeholder communities. It also considers some of the challenges of working with difficult pasts – in this case, accidents which killed and injured many tens of thousands of railway workers, and which run counter to popular perceptions of a ‘golden age’ of rail travel in Britain and Ireland. These tensions are noted and related to 2025’s Railway 200 celebration as both an opportunity and a challenge in terms of telling more diverse stories about the past.