Tracking Railways Archives Project - TRAP
A Special Interest Group of the Railway & Canal Historical Society
RAILWAY GENEALOGY and FAMILY HISTORY
TRAP’S focus is on listing railway records held at various locations throughout the British Isles. TRAP is not intended to be a prime source for information regarding railway company employees. TRAP is concerned with archive collections of railway history related to the development, construction and operation of railway companies and their equipment. Regrettably very few employee records appear to have survived relative to the huge mass of other documentation, drawings and photographs. In a number of cases employee records have survived locally rather than nationally therefore local history sources close to where a relative was employed are always worth a check.
If you are researching your family history, there are a number of sources which you should look at before coming to TRAP and Access to Archives (A2A). These sources are well documented in nationally available genealogy magazines. The The National Archives at Kew in London hold census returns, wills and other sources, while records relating to births, marriages, deaths, adoptions and civil partnerships, are available at the General Register Office. One of the best starting points is a book entitled "Was Your Grandfather a Railwayman." An enlarged new edition was published in 2002 by the Federation of Family History Societies. The National Archives publishes a book entitled Railway Records which details all the railway records held by The National Archives. Another publication from The National Archives is Railway Ancestors by David T. Hawkings. A further useful book if you are not familiar with railway employment is "The Victorian Railway Worker" published by Shire Publications.
The Railway Ancestors Family History Society also has useful information on its website. Another web site with information is the Black Sheep Index. It contains an index to 35000 railway men involved in railway accidents and an index of railway men from an unknown source. See www.blacksheepindex.co.uk.
Many railway companies and British Railways published staff magazines which usually contained details of staff births, marraiges & deaths plus promotions, retirements etc. These magazines are very rarely indexed. Local libraries, the National Railway Museum, London Transport Museum and the Colindale Newspaper Library are all sources of these magazines.
As the TRAP database develops we may come across new sources of employee records at present unknown in which case these will be highlighted on this website in the future.