The National Railway Museum is finally giving LGBTQ+ rail workers their overdue moment in the spotlight—decades after many of them had to hide who they were while keeping the UK’s trains on time. In what museum curators are calling a “massive gap” in the collection, a new oral history project is capturing personal accounts from queer rail employees dating back over 50 years.
The exhibit—now on display in York—features a vibrant trail through the museum’s North Shed. There, rainbow-trimmed displays sit proudly beside sleek Inter-City train models, each telling the real-life stories of LGBTQ+ rail staff who navigated homophobia, secrecy, and, eventually, solidarity. Visitors can scan QR codes to listen to the recordings and hear, in the words of those who lived it, what life was like on the tracks as a queer person.
Senior curator Alison Petersen said the museum has “diverse and massive collections,” but these voices were conspicuously missing. “This is a history which hasn’t yet been told,” she said, adding that for many years, the subject was simply too difficult for people to speak about. The project team worked hard to make participants feel at ease—pairing each with a volunteer interviewer from the LGBTQ+ community who also had railway ties.
For communications staffer Laura Stoffers, a volunteer on the project, the interviews weren’t just touching—they were transformative. “It’s really inspiring being able to talk to older people who are part of the community who have lived their lives and might even share some advice with you,” she said. “I think about the interviews quite a lot afterwards, as well.”
One quote featured in the trail lays bare the emotional cost of silence. Ron Whalley, who developed high-speed trains, recalled, “I was having to be on my guard all the time… Life was full of trying to find legitimate excuses for not doing things. Because by that time of course I’d been with Alan for a couple of years.”
The exhibit isn’t just about pain, though—it’s also about resilience and progress. Alongside stories of abuse are moments of unexpected support: colleagues who offered protection, early LGBTQ+ employee networks, and brave workers who blazed trails long before Pride was mainstream.
While the trail wraps up in September, the archive will live on indefinitely. “People get a chance to tell their story and that is kept in our collection forever so that people in the future will understand what life has been like,” Petersen said.
This isn’t just railway history—it’s queer history. And for LGBTQ+ folks, especially those working in blue-collar or traditionally male-dominated industries like rail, it’s a validation that their stories matter. That they were there, pushing buttons and boundaries at the same time. And now, finally, they’re getting heard.