Victorian Railway Guard Clothing...

Staying with the textile theme (how surprising on this blog), but skipping a few centuries - there's been an interesting attempt to gather more information about the Railway Guard clothing in Victorian times, and how suited (or not-so-suited) they were to the tasks given the guards. So in a beautiful mash-up of living history and experimental archaeology, Anthony Dawson and two colleagues dressed in the re-created garments to do the tasks that would have been done by the original Railway Guards (with only very small changes). 

Their conclusion? It looks really smart, but is more on the "looking good" side than on the "this is practical and sensible" side when using it for work. You can read the full open-source article on the EXARC journal pages here.