Site Updated
15 May 2012
Page Updated
4 March 2012

Signalling Record Society

The Society Archives

The Society (SRS) has had archive material in its custody for a number of years. Most of the archive is in paper form but with increasing use of computers for record keeping, some of the archive material is now being made available in digital form. Other material consists of photographic collections.

Archive Information

Digital Archive Listings

History of the Archive

The first, and biggest, donation consisted mainly of several thousand signalling plans and signalling diagrams from the Southern Railway (SR) and its constituents, plus related material such as the instructions issued to signalmen at each box. Since that time numerous deposits of varying sizes have been made.

The Archive subsequently took charge of a direct deposit of former British Rail (BR) material that was not designated for preservation as public records. The deposit was sanctioned by the BR Record Officer - yes, this post still existed! Of course, much of the contents of the archive originated from BR in one way or another, some of it being saved from the bin when it became out of date.

The majority of the deposits are still from members, some deceased and some seeking to rationalise their collections and place important historical material at the disposal of members in general. An important condition of acceptance is that the Society is at liberty to dispose of duplicates, or items deemed not relevant to signalling & operation, normally by sale to members or transfer to some more relevant body.

The bulk of the archive material falls into the categories of:

 1 Weekly engineering circulars and special signalling notices.
 2 Appendices to working timetables and supplements thereto.
 3 Accident reports.
 4 Signalling contractor’s publicity material, brochures & catalogues.
 5 Technical handbooks & instruction manuals etc.
 6 Signals & Telegraph (S&T) Department correspondence & papers.
 7 S&T Department plans, diagrams, locking records etc. of signalling installations.
 8 Handwritten notes.

The Archive largely complements the collections of the The National Archives (TNA) (previously called the Public Record Office (PRO)) and National Railway Museum (NRM), which do not have the resources to accumulate or catalogue all the minutiae of details of every signalling installation in the UK, let alone equipment supplied for export by British firms. The TNA, for example, has inherited some Classes of such detailed material, although it does not seem to have a policy of acquiring more. The question of a rational division of records between all the interested parties is one which is frequently discussed by the Archive Manager and other committee members, although at present it is not entirely clear how much can be done in this respect. The SRS hopes to engage in dialogue with the Railway Heritage Committee (Records Sub-Committee) with this object in mind, and also to make things as easy as possible for researchers and other users. A first step might be unified indexes to classes/types of records, inclusive of all known repositories, and some progress had been made to this end. Clearly the Tracking Railway Archives Project (TRAP) is relevant to this. TRAP was supported by the SRS with practical and financial help. TRAP was wound up as such on 30 March 2008 and became from the following day part of the Railway & Canal Historical Society. Up to date information about TRAP is available here.

By 1997 the greater part of the material was neatly boxed and shelved and listing has proceeded, slowly. A major distinction is made between (a) printed or library material (the first four categories above) and (b) archive material. It has been decided that the former will not be kept in collections according to donor, but consolidated into a single resource of each category. The remaining four categories present more problems of arrangement, identification and indexing, and these problems are currently being tackled. It is pleasing to note that the biggest collection, the SR one, was listed in detail by a dedicated member before it was even moved to the archive store.

Donations To The Archive

The Archive continues to grow substantially, both from members’ donations and from BR, Railtrack and Network Rail sources. The SRS is committed to working with the Railway Heritage Committee (RHC), PRO, NRM and other statutory bodies, as well as Network Rail, to identify and rescue out-of-date records. A number of members with very substantial collections are known to have left these to the SRS in their Will, and the society seeks to ensure that arrangements are in place for a problem-free transfer of the records when the time comes.

We have produced a guide for donors which can be downloaded and printed out or just viewed in your browser. The guide includes sections setting out our policies, what we do and don't collect, digitisation and conservation.

Archive Location

The Archive is kept at the premises of The Kithead Trust at De Salis Drive, Hampton Lovett, near Droitwich Spa.

The SRS Archive is open on some weekdays to members, and by arrangement to other bona-fide researchers. For an appointment, or for further information, contact the Archivist, or in his absence the Research Co-ordinator.

The Kithead Trust is about 1.6 miles on foot from Droitwich Spa Station. It should be possible to get a taxi from the station. See maps below. To save or print a copy of either map, right click on the map and select 'save picture as' or 'print picture' as desired.

      

Archive Catalogue

A list of the archive boxes can be viewed here. Detail indexes to many of the boxes are available as well.

Paper indexes to some sections of the Archive are available. Each index gives a clear indication of the material held in the various collections so far catalogued. Current pricing and ordering details are set out on the Publications page.

PartCollection
 5Batts' Eastern Region Correspondence & Plans
 6Carr Collection

Order Now.

Digital Archive

In 2010 the Society received a donation of digital copies of some weekly operating notices and signalling notices. These formed the nucleus of a Digital Archive and the Society has embarked on digitising material held in the paper archive. Priority is being given to Weekly and Periodical Operating Notices as many of these were printed on poor quality paper which is now deteriorating. Other categories of material which will receive early attention are Signalling Notices, especially where these are on poor quality paper, and General and Sectional Appendices.

Wherever possible the digital copy will be the complete document. This is especially important with the Weekly Notices as information about changes of signal frame or locking is often only published in section B. There was no section C announcement because no change was visible to train crews! Weekly and Periodical Notices will be combined so far as possible into 'year sets'. This is intended to assist members searching the files when the precise date of an event is unknown.

Parts of the Digital Archive are available for download immediately free of charge. However, as the quantity of material available increases much of the Digital Archive will only be made available on CD as Research Notes. These CDs will be supplied at a modest cost and please bear in mind that the profit from sale of these CDs is ploughed back into supporting and expanding the Archive to the benefit of all. Pending batching sufficient files for a geographic area or subject to form a normal Research Note release, Members may obtain files on CD by contacting the webmaster. Each CD will be charged at £12 including postage and each CD can contain up to 600Mb of files.

Files are either in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) or Joint Picture Expert Groups (JPG) format, both of which are recognised international standards. A free reader for the PDF files can be downloaded from here. JPG files can be read using one of the many readily available graphics programs and both Apple and Windows operating systems include such readers.

The archive files are often large - please bear in mind that they will take some time to download, especially if you are not using broadband. Be aware also that some of the PDF files may give problems when using Acrobat Reader version 9. Use an earlier version of Reader if at all possible.

Contributions to the Digital Archive are always welcome. Click here to read the guide to making digital copies.

Guide Notes for Scanning Material

Material published by British Rail and its predecessors likely to be included in this archive was rarely in colour or shades of grey. Network Rail has introduced colour more recently now that their weekly and periodical notices are produced as Word documents and distributed in PDF form.

Members scanning material for donation to the Digital Archive are asked to follow these guide lines as far as possible within any limitations imposed by the scanner or PDF making software they use:

 1  Check whether the document is already listed on this web site as being available in digital format. Only sections C and D of some weekly notices is available - we would welcome complete copies of these.
 2  Please use Adobe Acrobat to create the PDF files if you possibly can as compatibility problems can arise if alternatives are used. If you don't have Acrobat available please let the webmaster know what software was used so that the files can be checked for compatibility before they are distributed. The scanned files should be Acrobat version 1.4 or earlier as this also reduces the risk of incompatibility.
 3 Please scan the entire document you have available. Complete copies can be used to enhance the extent of information available.
 4 If the original document is black print on a white (or plain coloured) background, set the scanner to operate in 'black print on a white background' mode. This will allow the resultant file size to be kept as small as possible both for storage purposes and to avoid excessive download times when the file is called up by researchers.
 5 Pages which contain images that rely on graduated levels of grey to be understood may be scanned in 'greyscale'. This produces larger size files so please confine scanning in 'greyscale' to those pages that actually need it.
 6 Pages which contain coloured sections may be scanned in 'colour'. This produces larger size files so please confine scanning in 'colour' to those pages that actually need it.
 7 Set the scanner resolution to 300dpi (dots per inch). Only increase this figure if it is necessary to overcome faint print on the original document or to avoid loss of fine detail. If the resolution is increased please confine usage to those pages which actually need it.
 8 Set the threshold to a figure low enough to minimise pick up of dirt, discolouration, crease marks etc and make the resultant copy as 'clean' as possible. Some experimentation may be needed in order to get the best result for each docment to be scanned whilst avoiding loss of information that is wanted.
 9 Similarly try different contrast settings if necessary.
 10 Set the scanner to 'deskew' (straighten) the scanned images.
 11 Set the scanner to avoid creating oversized borders round the scanned pages. Otherwise please trim off the excess of white (or black) borders by cropping the page size appropriately.
 12 Set the noise filter to eliminate spurious noise or dots.
 13 Set the image filter to remove halftones from black and white pages. If half tones are needed then use a 'greyscale' setting.
 14  If available, use the OCR (optical character recognition) setting to make the document searchable.
 15 If you combine multiple documents into a single file, index the start position of each document - Acrobat will do this autmatically.
 16 Send the scanned document(s) to the Society - details of how to do this are shown below.

Following these guidelines so far as possible will enable the archive to present information in the best possible quality.

Documents donated by members will have an additional page added by the Society advertising the Society itself and acknowledging the donor. Should donors prefer to remain anonymous then the acknowledgement can be omitted.

Sending Your Scanned Documents To The Society

The size of scanned files can be quite large - and can cause problems when sent by email. Please use the most appropriate method chosen from one of the following:

 1 Small documents less than 1Mb in size may be sent to the webmaster by email. Members will find the email address in The Signalling Record, otherwise please contact the webmaster first for the email address to use.
 2 If the file is larger than 1Mb and you have a web site of your own, upload the file to your web site and send the webmaster a link to download the file.
 3 If the file is larger than 1Mb and you do not have a web site of your own you can use, copy the file(s) to CD or DVD and post them. Members will find the postal address in The Signalling Record, otherwise please contact the webmaster first to obtain the postal address to send them to.