About Us

Our engineering inheritance

The Corporate Archive brings together drawings that relate to our engineering inheritance – a collection that represents the development of the most significant structures, engineers and innovation on the railway from the 19th century to the present day.

Documenting Network Rail

The Corporate Archive is also responsible for maintaining a modern archive for Network Rail. Records from the very earliest days of the railway sit alongside a business archive that demonstrates Network Rail’s governance and development of that same infrastructure today.

About our Archive

Our Corporate Archive has been accredited under the UK standard for archive services since 2013. It is part of a much larger national records team, whose focus is to provide operational information to our colleagues in Network Rail, the wider railway industry and our stakeholders on a daily basis.  This operational focus means we are unable to accommodate researchers at our records centre, however we will continue to make as much of our history available to you as we can online.

Researching Railway History 

Records relating to today’s railway infrastructure are not just held by Network Rail.  The railway has always created large quantities of records and over the years they have also been deposited in archives and museums across the country. Our guide to where you can find railway records so you can put your railway research on the right track can be found here.