Ian Waller explains how to access and search the records of workers in the British railway industry
Until Britain’s railways were nationalised in 1948 they were run by private enterprise. These companies provided secure employment, and in many families being employed on the railways was generational. Each company kept staff records with varying degrees of complexity, but unfortunately some of them have not survived.
The National Archives (TNA) at Kew holds records of private railway companies before
nationalisation; see the two research guides on its site at tinyurl.com/tna-guides
-railways-trains. However, an earlier consolidation took place in 1923, as a result of the 1921 Railways
Act. The vast majority of the UK’s hundreds of railway companies, many running small
branch lines, were grouped together into new companies often referred to as the ‘Big
Four’: the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS), the Great Western Railway (GWR),
the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) and the Southern Railway (SR). Today records
are only thought to survive from 130 of the merged companies.
The larger railway employers before the creation of the Big Four were among the first to provide pensions, sick pay, convalescent homes, staff housing, community facilities and social activities, and apprenticeships, in addition to technical and professional training.
Within most railway companies there were various departments, so it may not always be obvious in which your ancestor worked. Indeed you may not realise that your forebear worked for the railways if their occupation is recorded on other documents as chambermaid, merchant seaman, cook, docker, telephonist, telegrapher or artist, as opposed to more obvious railway jobs.
Staff records form only part of company records. An individual’s service record provides invaluable information including places of employment, rates of pay, promotions, transfers, offences, punishments and commendations. You may be lucky enough to find details of previous employment too.
Although you would hope to find a comprehensive record of service, some information appears in ledgers covering only certain locations or time periods. So it may be necessary to research several volumes to piece together a full service history. Many records contain only a single-line entry for a particular person. Alternatively you may find information about an individual on a departmental employment card. However, many records are in ledgers usually with a double page for each individual, but I have also seen
