About the blog

British railways are run on a foundation of paperwork. Everything must have an instruction; a list; a rule. The railway was once such a huge, chaotic system that the only way to manage it was with reams and reams of paper. Today the system is much more compact but the mountain of literature upon which it is run is greater than ever. This is simply a collection of pages from railway documents. They may be old or new, interesting or tedious, large or small. Most are obscure and esoteric. Many feature interesting diagrams and all share the same strange mix of dry railway language and exotic nomenclature that has hardly changed in 200 years. I love these documents and have a large collection to share. If you want to see more of something or less of another, please get in touch or leave a comment.

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Saturday 31 March 2012

Self help..


From - PASSENGER SELF HELP TROLLEY MANUAL; British Railways Board, August 1983 (issue 2)
This is quite a charming and unusual little booklet. It's an A5 sized, cardboard covered collection of memos and drawings relating to the sort of galvanised metal and yellow plastic adorned trolley (manufactured by Middlehurst Ltd*) which used to be umbiquitous at railway stations up and down the country. It has six sections viz. - 

1. Circulars 
2. Code of Practice: Use and Control
3. Maintenance and Repair Procedures
4. Spares: Catalogue Numbers
5. Drawings
6. Repair Monetary Limit: Details

All sections are typed and are quite crudely reproduced. I've not really got very much to say about this one, but it's worth a look nonetheless.

*Remarkably, you can still buy one new!

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