| Administrative History | These records have been presented to this office under a scheme which made available to us all Great Western Railway (GWR) and British Rail (BR) Western Region archives which the National Archives and the Railway Museum at York do not want. This arrangement has caused a lack of cohesion in the archival retention of British Rail and its predecessors, there are many series of records, such as chain surveys, staffing and pension records, where the 19th century ones are at Kew and the 20th century ones are at Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office.
All the management and policy records are held at Kew and what we have here of that category are duplicate sets or parts of them. Other categories were generally felt too insignificant for the public records at Kew, yet there are some very "local" 19th century archives there - and this undermines any clear-cut division.
Our lists should be used closely with those of the National Archives where overlaps occur. |