ABSTRACT

Our national obsession with railways makes it easy to believe that the conservation of railway buildings and structures is a special activity with its own methods and approach. In some respects this is true, partly because of factors to do with common ownership and also because a working railway imposes particular requirements on the way buildings are conserved and used. However, the decline of the railways, plus the fragmentation in their ownership and operation, makes the idea of a common approach to a uniform set of problems seem less and less realistic. But, more importantly, it is not obvious that all buildings and structures connected with the railways have a major ingredient in common. A typical wayside station may have a clearer kinship with the domestic villa architecture of its time than it has with other railway buildings, and a railway workshop may be best understood as simply another kind of factory building. As regards both history and present-day conservation problems, the railway element can easily be overstated.