Author Archives: Peter Thorpe, Search Engine Visitor Services Assistant

The railway link to a 131-year-old shipwreck

Posted on November 21, 2012

In Search Engine, our archive and library centre, we receive many thousands of enquiries each year by letter and email. We get some fascinating questions, and one recent query was quite unusual, so I thought I’d share it with you. A few … Continue reading →

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James Bond 007 lets the train take the strain

Posted on September 14, 2012

There are over 1.5 million photographs in our collection and there are quite a lot of images of road vehicles amongst them. That isn’t a surprise, as railway companies have always operated large numbers of vehicles for purposes such as local delivery of goods. However I can’t think of … Continue reading →

Posted in Image collections | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Drawing of an artificial leg from Crewe

Posted on July 24, 2012

Welcome to the second instalment in my series of occasional posts about items from our archives. Our archive stores contain around one million engineering drawings. Most of these are designs for locomotives, carriages and wagons, ranging from general arrangement drawings of an entire vehicle … Continue reading →

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A petition to let railway staff grow moustaches

Posted on April 5, 2012

One of the nicest things about working in Search Engine is coming across fascinating items in the archives that I didn’t know about. Quite often I happen upon some wonderful items while I’m retrieving material for a researcher, or just searching the museum’s inventory in order to … Continue reading →

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Displays & exhibitions in Search Engine

Posted on May 5, 2011

Last week, Alison mentioned the royal train related material which was going on display over the weekend to mark the Royal Wedding. Below are a few images of the exhibits that were on show for visitors to browse – including posters, drawings and photographs. Display of Royal train … Continue reading →

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Railway tourist guides: part 2

Posted on March 9, 2011

Read part 1 of this blog post From the end of the 19th century the railway companies steadily increased the marketing of their networks to entice the tourist and holidaymaker. When talking of railway advertising, many people automatically tend to … Continue reading →

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Railway tourist guides: part 1

Posted on February 15, 2011

BBC2 has recently been showing the second series of “Great British Railway Journeys”, featuring Michael Portillo’s travels around Britain by rail using an 1860s ‘Bradshaw’s Guide’. The first series led to a quite a few enquiries here in Search Engine … Continue reading →

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