ABSTRACT
Railway heritage: it undoubtedly means rather different things to different people. My academic training was in modern history, so when I was first told I was to take on responsibility for railway heritage, I had rather hopeful visions of frequent visits to the major steam preservation societies. My images were of beautifully polished steam locomotives and Queen Victoria’s royal carriages. I carried these images with me to the first of many discussions with Mr Andrew Dow, then Head of the National Railway Museum, where he immediately brought me back to earth. Teaspoons’, he intoned; ‘teaspoons … paintings … clocks’. These are, of course, as much of interest to the National Railway Museum as are locomotives. We have a tendency, most of us think, to view heritage in terms of large, attractive packages – buildings, for instance. And most of this book concentrates on architecture. But this paper will explore a different aspect of railway heritage: that which is concerned with artefacts and records.
