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By Karen Baker on

Railway historian’s research legacy begins new life

We've teamed up with the Railway & Canal Historical Society to create a new research tool based on the work of esteemed railway historian Alan Jackson.

Alan Jackson wrote many books in his lifetime and, as part of his work, created an extensive collection of reference cards of railway-related themes from books, magazines and accompanying boxes of clippings. The Railway and Canal Historical Society (R&CHS) has provided the funding to have these hand-written cards digitised. They have also helped us find the volunteers needed to transcribe the many thousand entries of the digital index cards into a useable spreadsheet. Once complete, the plan is to make this tool available to researchers online.

Alan Jackson's index cards in situ
Alan Jackson’s index cards in situ

The cards are hand-written and involve quite a bit of detective work to decode

It marks an exciting change to our volunteer programme as this is the first time we have supported volunteers who work away from the museum. All our transcribers work at home from all over the country.

If you would like more information about this project or would like to become involved in making this resource a reality, please contact librarian karen.baker@nrm.org.uk

You can find out more about the R&CHS on their website.

6 comments on “Railway historian’s research legacy begins new life

  1. Tilbury somehow led me to some super8 footage taken at Manchester Victoria whilst looking for Tilbury and Southend Railway and showed Ayrshire Yeomanry taking a train out in 1967. Thankfully this locomotive miraculously survived and now so will this archive and who knows where these avenues of research will lead us!

    Keep up the good work

    1. I’m afraid Ayrshire Yeomanry did not survive.
      It was a renaming of one of Ian Riley’s black 5’s in preservation.
      David Dippie

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