Railway Studies research retrospective

In January 2025 the final students will graduate from the University of York's Masters Degree in Railway Studies. Over the programme's life, those who studied produced around 60 original research dissertations. They covered a diverse range of subjects, encompassing social, economic, business, cultural and labour history, amongst other things, expanding considerably our understanding of the history of transport and mobility. This session celebrates the programme's life and the students' achievements, with a series of lightning papers drawn from their research. 

• William Ramsden - Joint Railways - how organisations cooperate - This presentation illustrates the different means by which companies cooperated in the development of joint railways and uses the Otley and Ilkley Joint Railway as a case study to demonstrate how such relationships developed.
• Andrew Sage - Britain’s energy crisis - a missed opportunity for British Rail’s Motorail? -Was Britain’s 1973-5 energy crisis an opportunity for British Rail’s Motorail to increase its relevance or did it become a victim of industrial action?
• Ann Austin: A “working knowledge”:  Current empirical understandings are shaped by twenty-first-century working knowledge. Removal of the postmodernist lens clarified the rationale behind the costly, haphazard and contradictory actions of the South Eastern Railway company regarding their provision of elementary education at Ashford between 1841 & 1881. The greater appreciation of the influence that the wider contemporary milieu played upon the actions of a business reveals the state of flux through which the company found itself negotiating.
  

This session ties in with the ‘Railway 200’ programme, being marked nationally during 2025.