As part of next year’s Railway 200 events, which is a celebration of 200 years of the modern railway, a search is underway to find the UK’s longest-serving railway family.

Railway 200 is a year-long series of events to mark the launch of the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825, and will include anniversary activities and that celebrate railway people, their pride, passion, and professionalism.

As part of the events, a nationwide hunt has been launched to discover the person who claims to be a member of the longest-serving railway family.

The youngest representative of that family will be invited to take part in some of the many planned celebratory events.

The present claim to fame is held by father and son Mike and Andrew Lamport, who can trace their railway lineage back to 1846 when Queen Victoria was on the throne and after train carriage roofs had been introduced for Third Class passengers.

Mike, 76, from Ely in Cambridgeshire, retired from the railway in 2008. He traced his railway roots in an uninterrupted line back to April 1846 when his great, great grandfather Matthew Mathews joined the original South Western Railway as ‘Porter No.18′ at Richmond station in Surrey before being promoted to become a passenger guard on the Waterloo to Portsmouth line when it opened in 1859.

In 1861, after being a hero of a train crash at Epsom Junction, he was appointed as a District Inspector at Bishopstoke, later renamed Eastleigh.

His last years on the railway were as station master at Shawford station until he retired in 1896, ten years before he died in 1904.

All four of Matthew’s sons also had 50-year railway careers, one of them becoming a ‘Top Hat’ station master at Waterloo station.

Mike Lamport’s father joined the Southern Railway in 1937 as a signal lad at Liphook and, after 49 years of service, retired in 1986 when he was station master at Haslemere in Surrey.

Mike joined British Railways in 1964 and, after retiring from the railway 44 years later, has served on several railway heritage bodies and is a member of the Railway Heritage Trust Advisory Panel and a voluntary adviser to Railway 200. 

Following in his father’s footsteps, Mike’s son Andrew, 27, from Croydon, works as a guard for South Western Railway, based at London Waterloo, just as Matthew had been 160 years previously.

Mike hopes that Andrew will continue to fly the rail flag for many years to come and wonders whether he will still be on the railway in 2046 to make it a 200-year record for his railway relatives.

If anyone can claim a railway ancestry dating back to before April 1846, they are invited to email [email protected] with their contact details, and the Railway 200 team will contact them. Further details about Railway 200 are online at www.railway200.co.uk

Railway 200 will have a coordinated launch with a ‘whistle off’ at midday on Wednesday, 1st January.

The railway is like a family, and its 300,000 people are its beating heart. There are many inter-generational railway families serving on the network today. We’d love to hear from anyone who can beat the Lamports’ impressive rail pedigree, hopefully stretching back to 1825, the birth of the modern railway, or even earlier.

Alan Hyde, on behalf of Railway 200