NRS-19536 | Signal Branch photographs

Full description

This series consists of black and white photographs collected by the railways Signal Branch. They cover a variety of subjects including station buildings, signal boxes, signal engineers' offices and workshops, control rooms, signals, level crossings, points, relay racks, interlocking machines, indicator diagrams, train arrival and departure indicators, lever machines, wiring, switchboards, crossing loops, staff transfer magazines, and other signalling equipment. In terms of location, there are photographs from a wide number of both metropolitan and country stations.

Also included in the series are a small number of printed illustrations from the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in Britain, dating from 1833, covering views of the railway, coaches, tunnels and viaducts. There are also a few photos from the Victorian state railways, covering double-wire points and signals.

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 R263 and could have been previously cited as such in notes by researchers at State Rail Archives or in publications or unpublished works.