Celebrating the industrial past: Regional commemorations of British railways

Speaker: Sophie Vohra (University of York/National Railway Museum)

This paper will examine the ways British railways have and continue to be celebrated by communities with regional connections to this industry’s history. Examining two different types of commemorative events – the long-running annual Camborne Trevithick Day and the planning for the bicentenary of the Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR) in the North East of England – it will demonstrate how and why communities engage with their industrial landscape and their associated symbols of railway history. Celebrating a local nineteenth-century engineer, Richard Trevithick, each year, the former has become a recurring feature of the wider culture of the Cornish town and its industrial history. The S&DR has been celebrated at every 50-year juncture since it opened in 1825. Currently in the planning stages, the bicentenary celebrations in 2025 and beyond will be ambitious, and are being designed to celebrate the history of this pioneering railway as well as to protect and conserve the heritage of the region and to benefit the local communities in the long term.