Railway Jobs

kildarejohn

In one branch of my ancestry in 1901 & 1911 census there were 4 brothers and some of their sons who all worked on the Railways, with jobs as porters, signalmen, ticket checkers and one station master.
Can anyone comment on what the jobs involved e.g. were there qualifications or exams required to be signalman, or was it just experience? How did a man get promoted? What was status of different jobs?

chughes

You might get the details you are looking for from the Irish Railway Record Society. Their website is http://www.irrs.ie/ and they are based at Heuston Station in Dublin.

L1011

The IRRS have extremely good records of some of the railway companies and more patchy of others - really depends on what happened to them. My brother has seen an ancestors detailed personnel record from the Dublin & South Eastern (which merged to the GSR which basically became CIE). If they worked on a railway that closed or merged before the GSR formation there may be less records around.

Training was basically all internal and promotion was done on merit and occasionally the tiniest bit of nepotism.

The Kurgan

Dropped into the Railway Society not so long ago to check for an ancestors
staff record who worked at Macmine Station as a Platelayer/Ganger between 1896-1935.As been said above, they've a great collection .You just need to have some of the main details like what station , and approx year as they manually search for the record.

The photo above was taken on a crappy phone as they have no facility to scan or print out.At some stage I might pop back in with one of those small mobile scanners to get a proper image

kildarejohn

Thanks Kurgan, I had no idea there was that much info on the records. I must get into the IRRS one of these days soon.

The Chieftain

kildarejohn wrote: »

In one branch of my ancestry in 1901 & 1911 census there were 4 brothers and some of their sons who all worked on the Railways, with jobs as porters, signalmen, ticket checkers and one station master.
Can anyone comment on what the jobs involved e.g. were there qualifications or exams required to be signalman, or was it just experience? How did a man get promoted? What was status of different jobs?

Just to cover a few aspects that were not previously commented on.
Careers and promotion in the railway companies tended to be strictly within the bounds of separate departments, i.e. locomotive, operating, civil engineering, station staff, etc.
So, for example, a promotion path within the locomotive department was from cleaner, to fireman, to driver, and a driver could progress through different levels of seniority. I believe exams were indeed required for drivers, firemen, guards, and signalmen - the railway rulebook was and is complicated, and they had to be familiar with it. Note also that some Irish railway employees were employees of British companies, in which case one has to look to Britain - e.g. Fishguard and Rosslare Harbour Railway Co., and others.
- Longtime IRRS member