NRS-15601 | State Rail Parliamentary Papers

Full description

This series comprises copies of reports, correspondence and papers relating to railways, tabled in the Parliament of New South Wales and retained by the Department of Railways and its predecessors. The Department was required to submit annual reports to Parliament and could be required to compile special reports. The reports of inquiries, Select Committees, Royal and other Commissions were required to be tabled in both houses as were certain contractual and financial reports. Other reports were received by Parliament and required to be printed as a result of questions by members. Members of the public were permitted to petition parliament and these also formed part of the Parliamentary Papers.

Subjects include the following. Reports on legislation, annual and special reports of the Department; reports of the section heads to the Commissioner regarding railway business; accounts, loans and other financial matters; railway surveying; the purchase of land for railway purposes; petitions for the construction of railway lines; the construction of railway lines and other infrastructure; problems experienced with particular railways lines; the purchase of locomotives and other rolling stock, and problems associated with particular types of rolling stock or their components; railway station buildings; agreements and contracts (such as for the supply of materials or the construction of tracks); passenger and freight statistics; statistics for free rail passes issued; freight rates; reports regarding the carriage of various types of freight; reports of and inquiries regarding accidents; tenders for the management of Railway Refreshment rooms; staff matters including occasional staff lists, employee rules and regulations and industrial matters. Tramways were under the control of the Commissioners for most of this period and tramway matters covered by this series include legislation, reports from select committees regarding various bills, extracts from parliamentary proceedings and newspapers cuttings, the construction of lines, purchase and maintenance of rolling stock, reports of accidents, staff matters and electrification of the tramways.

A note regarding the arrangement of the items.
The item titles are those of the individual reports. There is no consistency. For example railway accidents may be titled as 'accident', 'commission of inquiry' 'notes', 'papers' 'reports' 'railway accident'. It is recommended that an Investigator Simple Search or Advanced Search by item word is used to identify any particular matter.

Custody History
From 1955 until 2000 the State Rail Authority of New South Wales maintained an ‘in house archives’ consisting of the archival records of the Authority, its predecessor agencies and the private railway companies taken over by the government. The date ranges of the records were from 1849 until 2000. When the decision was made to close the ‘State Rail Archives’ the parts of the collection that were required as State archives were transferred to the State Records Authority of NSW. Those record series were incorporated into the State Records series system of archives control and were re-numbered.

This series was formerly part of the State Rail Archives collection. It may have been viewed in the State Rail Archives as series R159 and could have been previously cited as such in notes by researchers at State Rail Archives or in publications or unpublished works.