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  • Ghosts and Fairies Attacking Railways June 17, 2020

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Ghosts and Fairies Attacking Railways

    In nineteenth century Britain we have several references to ghosts and fairies attacking newly constructed railways…

    Victorian Urban Legends: Snuff Poisoning? July 14, 2015

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Victorian Urban Legends: Snuff Poisoning?

    No not the cinematic kind of snuff! This story appeared in 1870 and enjoyed wide circulation in all British newspapers. A Wolverhampton contemporary records what seems to be a new trick upon railway travellers. The other day, a passenger from Wolverhampton to Bilston, after having been drawn into conversation by couple of respectable looking fellow-travellers, […]

    Devil on the Trans-Siberian Railway December 8, 2014

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Devil on the Trans-Siberian Railway

    Beach has previously celebrated strange railway superstition stories, the simple and unsurprising fact that innocent peoples faced with long lines of track and steam behemoths running across country naturally mixed up science and superstition and interpreted the train as a demon or bogey. Most strikingly there is the fate of the Plains Indians in their battle with […]

    Women and Trains July 26, 2013

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Women and Trains

    Beachcombing has a dear aged friend who left her native country and came to live in the UK in the late 1930s. On her first day in the capital she, then a fresh-faced beautiful woman, climbed onto a train at Waterloo (follow the link for the best Churchill story of them all) and settled down […]

    From Ox Carts to Railways May 2, 2011

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern, Prehistoric
    From Ox Carts to Railways

    Archaeologists love the idea of continuity, the notion that little really changes, that from generation to generation, though the forms, languages and professions of faith may alter, the substance remains the same. Historians are, generally speaking, the opposite. They fixate on change and have little patience with the archaeological fraternity – Beachcombing wrote for many […]