Making archive visits or academic writing part of every week was my 2024 New Year’s resolution. I succeeded, albeit trickier than I expected. Tying up a few loose ends today as I write my third monograph. 1890: Newcastle Council passed a bylaw banning “sweeps and bakers” from omnibuses. How unfair 🥹

Xmas Eve writing my 3rd monograph, an #envhist of transport 1730-1914. Infinite siftings through excellent urban histories asking the authors (in my head), “why didn’t you write this from an env hist perspective?”, “do you know what you’re missing?” and “where are the trees, rivers, horses, rats?”🌳🐀

An extended deadline for applications to become Environment and History’s Deputy Editor, with me and Prof David Moon (Co-Eds). I enjoyed being Deputy Editor, learning much about reviewing, editing and dissemination. White Horse Press is special, small and independent, an asset to our field #envhist

Very well observed 🤣

A great four-month opportunity for post-doctoral research on sustainability and the environment at the British Library. Deadline: 7th Jan 25 🎓📖
It’s aimed at ECRs working in the arts, humanities or social sciences 🙂

www.bl.uk/more/researc...

My Sat morning, reading scholarship. University work fills my week. At weekends, I can be a scholar and remember why I spent two decades becoming an historian. Into a seventeenth-century world of transport: ‘mud, ruts and straining horseflesh’ (p. xi) with Dorian Gerhold’s Carriers & Coachmasters 🎓🐴

Excellent 🎨👨‍🎨

The renamed London Overground lines. About time as well! The mundane details of daily life should be inspiring and positive. These new names make me smile 😃 #infrastructure #TfL #transport

Written in 1847, an emotive epitaph to a 27 year old engineman who was killed in an accident at Stocksfield on the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway in 1840 🚂⚰️

Writing up archives. Yellow means I got excited! 1825 plans for the horse-powered Newcastle and Carlisle Rail-Road: “it must be obvious that the principle on which the whole line is laid down must for ever preclude the introduction of those machines”. By 1835: they scrambled for locomotives. Humans!

From a minute book of Cornhill North Main Line. Jedburgh Library donated free magazines to lone signalmen in 1903, 1904 and 1905 to alleviate boredom. Human connection and perhaps joy in a challenging infrastructural pocket. A lone signalman reading magazines in his box was imbued with kindness 🚂😍📖