Research resources

This page, provided by the Railway & Canal Historical Society, links to information resources for research into transport history. These will include some ’how to do it’ advice; details of guides, bibliographies and other printed material; information about archives and libraries; and links to indexes and other resources available on the Internet. Suggestions for additions and amendments will be welcomed.

The R&CHS is associated with TRAP - Tracking Railways Archives Project - the on-line rail research facility www.trap.org.uk. TRAP has organised the transfer of 3,600 pages of paper catalogues - representing about 35,000 individual items – of railway company archives held in 45 English and Welsh county record offices and the National Railway Museum to the records of The National Archives held on the A2A website www.a2a.org.uk.

For lots of libraries, archives, record offices and other organisations which can provide sources of information, see our external links page. For some more institutions which don’t have a web presence, see our Libraries and archives page.

Many of the selected articles from our Journal on this website relate to the practice of research and publishing.

The Society produces an annual bibliography of published literature relating to the history of transport. We are here presenting the lists from recent years: 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Early railways: a bibliography of periodical literature is available to view or download as an extract from the Society’s bibliographic database.

For information on published guides to research resources on transport history see our list of published guides.