Tracking Railway Archives Project - "TRAP"

During 2000, through the Railway Librarians Association, the Circle has become involved in a national programme dubbed 'Access to Archives' (A2A). The programme is designed to enable researchers to gain access to archives covering many topics - not just railway ones - but the Circle, of course, is helping with access to rail industry archives.

A consortium of railway societies, of which the WRRC is an active member, successfully applied to the Heritage Lottery Fund for funding for the Project. The consortium is working closely with the Public Record Office, Kew, and the National Railway Museum at York so that their expertise can be utilised.

The Project's initial objective is to ensure that card index or paper catalogues of significant collections of railway material held by Record Offices and other repositories are converted to  digital catalogues so that the content and extent of an archive can be browsed via the internet. Such a facility might avoid a fruitless visit to an otherwise promising Record Office or, conversely, reveal sought-after information held at a most unlikely source. 

The initial railway project will deal with archives in record offices and other repositories in England. Later projects will include Wales whilst the Scottish archives were posted on the internet on St. Andrews Day in 2000.

Needless to say, all this is labour-intensive so volunteers are needed to help with TRAP's wider ambitions. Please see the Update page for the latest details.For the latest update of the present state of TRAP click here