Saturday 25 February 2012

Lost property on the Railways - A Rule Book

 If there is something the railways of Britain should be noted for, it is bureaucracy. As a railway historian this is fascinating for me, as the information systems established early in railway history have kept the huge networks of rails, staff and stations operating. Consequently, I have developed an almost compulsive urge for collecting the many rule and instruction books that the railways before 1948 churned out in vast numbers. The scope of my collecting is not limited to companies' main rule books that were issued to every employee on their first day at work, and then taken away on their last. But no, they are so ubiquitous that my collection would be quite dull. Rather, I take great joy in acquiring instructional texts that governed all the other facets of railway work. So, here, I present a few pages of my latest acquisition, a London Midland and Scottish Railway 'Instructions to goods and passenger managers, goods agents, station masters, passenger and parcel agents and others concerned at Stations in England, Wales and Ireland regarding  missing and found goods and coaching traffic, passengers' lost property and money, disposal of salvage' from 1934.

P.S. I hope to digitise and make available all my rule books when the PhD is over.


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