Railway Navvies of the SVR

The canals of Britain were known as Inland Navigations and the labourers and tradesmen who built them became known as 'Navvies'. As canal building turned to railway building in the 19th century, the name stuck and the Railway Navvies, and their exploits, became almost part of British folklore.
Very little evidence remains of the thousands of men who would have been employed in building the Severn Valley Railway, other than newspaper reports, which unfortunately focus almost entirely on either accidents or court appearances.

• 1859 "LABOURERS STRIKING.-A short distance from Sambourne, upon the Severn Valley Railway line, there is a deep and lung cutting of sandstone, which the men have great difficulty in getting on with. On Tuesday last, their master, a sub-contractor, informed them that he should require them to fill 15 trucks per day instead of 14, their usual number; but they immediately left, taking with them their tools, and have gone in quest of employment elsewhere."

• 1859 "FALL OF EARTH.-William Bennet, a labourer working on the Severn Valley Railway, near Sambourne, was on Saturday severely injured by a fall of earth. He is going on favourably under the care of Dr. Montgomery."

• 1859 "A RAILWAY DEFAULTER.—On Friday last, one of the gangers named David Deer, employed upon the Severn Valley Railway, at Upper Areley, absconded, taking with him the whole of the wages due to about twelve or fifteen of the men for a fortnight's labour, leaving the poor fellows and their families completely destitute."

• 1876 "Two workmen have been killed and two seriously injured through a great fall of earth in a new railway tunnel near Bewdley"