Welcome to the Railways Archive: a free online archive of documents charting the development of Britain's railways.

Britain's railways have a long, unique and complex history, shaped by engineering, politics, economics and social change, and this history is well served by a multitude of books and other material. However, the original documents which drove and reflected change on the railway are often not easy to come by, and the Archive is making these accessible for the first time. The documents include; acts of parliament, accident reports and publicity material.

The Railways Archive is an online library for such material; from the first Act of Parliament to regulate railways, through to the Modernisation Plan, Beeching Reports, the collapse of Railtrack and right up to the Railways Act 2005 which has received royal assent, it is of use to anyone researching UK railway history and requiring access to primary source material.

"Thank you so much for this archive. I am the great grand-daughter of one of the drivers in the 1935 Welwyn accident. My mother has told me of the findings of the report but now I am able to read it for myself. Mum was 12 years old at the time of the accident and her memories of the ensuing hours and days are still sharp."

The archive can be browsed in a number of ways:

• You can view and search the entire document archive;
• You can browse the archive by various categories;
• You can view and search our accidents list;
• You can view and search our accidents map;
• You can search our documents and events archives directly by text, date, category, event, development, author, or publisher;
• Documents can be viewed by the date they were added to the site.

For more about downloads times see our download guide.

Contributions to the site
We welcome contributions to the site; please see our contributions page for more details.