Research & Archives
NRM Archives Online
Library catalogue
Use the Library catalogue to find books and magazines to help you in your research and then read them in Search Engine.
Science and Society Picture Library
Looking for a photo or poster? Copies of any of the 50,000 images from the collections of National Railway Museum, National Media Museum and the Science Museum can be browsed or bought.
Ingenious
Website contains over 30,000 images which are used to illustrate over 30 different subjects, topics and debates from the collections of the National Railway Museum, National Media Museum and the Science Museum.
Access to Archives A2A
Provides online access to some of the National Railway Museum’s archives.
Other Resources
Thanks to two collaborative projects with the Public Record Office and the Midland Railway Society, we have now been able to start the work of making catalogues and finding aids to some of the NRM's extensive archive collections available on-line.
On-line access is currently available to:
- The Doncaster Locomotive Works archive catalogue (NRM ref. 2000-7200)
- The BR Standard Locomotives engineering drawings catalogue (NRM ref. 2001-8487)
- The NRM's "Guide to Photographic Collections"
- Catalogue records for 10,000 negatives from the Midland Railway Derby photographic archive
How to access this information
The Doncaster and BR Standard catalogues were coded for web access by the Tracking Railway Archives Project (TRAP) - a voluntary consortium of the leading UK railway historical societies that are undertaking numerous projects to improve user access to railway archive information, wherever it is held.
The "Guide to Photographic Collections" was coded by the Yorkshire Signpost group - a consortium of archive offices from the Yorkshire region working to increase on-line information about archives held in the county.
Both the TRAP and Yorkshire Signpost projects were funded by the Public Record Office's "Access to Archives" (A2A) initiative.
The Derby photographs finding aid is an ongoing project being undertaken by volunteers from the Midland Railway Society, as part of the NRM's successful volunteer programme to increase access to our collections.
Our thanks go to all volunteers and archive staff in other offices who have helped with these projects, which we hope will be the first of many.
Accessing the Catalogues
Finding aids accessible via the Access to Archives A2A website
- Doncaster Locomotive Works archive catalogue
- BR Standard Locomotive Drawing catalogue
- NRM "Guide to Photographic Collections"
Finding aids accessible via the Midland Railway Society website.
- Midland Railway Derby photographic archive
Tips on using the Catalogues
In the Access to Archives (A2A) website homepage click on "Advance Search" in the middle of the page. select "National Railway Museum Library and Archives" from the "Location of Archives" drop-down list, and then click on the red "Search" button. This will bring up a list of all the NRM finding aids held on the "Access to Archives (A2A)" website. Click on "view" underneath each catalogue to see the full catalogue.
The Midland Railway Society's "Derby Registers" page gives details of this ongoing project and explains how to access the database.
Doncaster Locomotive Works archive catalogue (NRM ref. 2000-7200). This catalogue has been put on A2A in six sections. The descriptions in A2A are a little obscure, so to help you, the six sections are: Introduction, Register & Schedules, explanation of drawing letter codes, and drawing sections A-E, F-L, M-O, P-T, U-X, Y-Z. Doncaster Works coded its drawings by letter according to the components or sub-assemblies depicted on the drawings. Sections P and Q contain the surviving locomotive General Arrangement/Pipe and Rod/Painting Diagram drawings. Section R contains the surviving Tender Arrangement drawings. These are the drawings that will probably be of most interest to railway modellers.
BR Standard Locomotive drawings catalogue (NRM ref 2001-8487) This catalogue has been put on A2A in three sections. These are: Introduction and "BR" (Brighton) drawings, "DE" (Derby) drawings and "DN" (Doncaster) and "SW" Swindon) drawings.
NRM Guide to Photographic Collections: This finding aid has been split up so each photographic archive held by the NRM has its own section on A2A. Each entry gives a high-level overview of the contents of the archive, together with information on the date range covered, and whether any detailed finding aids exist for the archive. The guide does not contain any detailed listings of individual photographs in each archive - its purpose is to allow users to identify which archives may be of interest to them for further research.
Midland Railway Derby Photographic archive catalogue: Detailed instructions on how to search the catalogue are given on the MRS webpage.
What are all these complicated reference numbers? On the A2A website the NRM archive catalogues are festooned with what may look like very complicated reference numbers. The purpose of these reference codes is to give each individual archive an internationally unique identification code, so they tend to be very long. However, they are quite simple to understand when broken down into their component elements.
"GB 756" is the national standard repository code for the NRM Library & Archive, and is used by A2A as a prefix for NRM archive references.
NRM reference codes in the format "YYYY-nnnn" (e.g. "2000-7200" or "2001-8487") are NRM Inventory codes to uniquely identify individual archives or items within archives.
Individual engineering drawings are referenced by their original railway drawing office number as a suffix to the full A2A reference code. For example, the full A2A archive reference code for Doncaster Locomotive Works drawing number "F100" is "GB 756 2000-7200/F100" and the full A2A reference code for BR Standard Locomotive Swindon drawing number "SL-SW-124" is "GB 756 2001-8487-SL_SW-124"
If you wish to consult these drawings in the NRM Research Centre then you only need quote the original drawing number(s), not the full A2A reference code.