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Finding records of never built railways

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trebor79

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Bit of an odd query, but how would one go about finding any surviving plans or other documents regarding a railway that was never built?
I assume the British Library would be a good place to start, but to make matters more complicated I don't actually know the name of company I'd be looking for.
I refer to a scheme to build a railway between Attleborough and Diss. It must have been a serious proposal as a station hotel was built in one of the village on the route (New Buckenham, now a rather fine gastro pub), but there was little evidence of any other construction.
 
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Dr_Paul

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The local authority (town or county) archives often have all sorts of old documents, so it would be worth going along to wherever the records are kept for that area, Norwich perhaps. Old newspapers are also a good source of information; in the pre-digital past I'd go to The Times annual index then look up anything I found in that paper and, having found precise dates, other papers if necessary, but most national papers and quite a few local ones are now on searchable databases, which makes searching a lot less of an arduous task.
 
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DavidGrain

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Without the name of the company, I don't think you will stand much chance. However this information might be of help from the online catalogue of the Parliamentary Archives
https://archives.parliament.uk/collections/getrecord/GB61_HL_PO_PB_3_plan1845_N10

Norwich and Brandon Railway.
« Back to search results

To see this item in our search room please contact us: [email protected]

 
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krus_aragon

krus_aragon

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If a railway was never built, the question (as far as records go) is how far did plans get?

To get Parliament to consider a bill, plans would have to be deposited at Westminster (and with the County Hall (or similar) of every county that the proposed railway would pass through, for landowners to check what might be compulsorily purchased from them, etc. The expense of doing this (surveying, printing, paying parliamentary agents who knew what had to be handed in where) meant that many schemes didn't even get this far.

Railway plans were only debated in the house if they were objected to at the committee stage (but not thrown out completely). So there may be no significant records in Hansard. But if the bill passed as an Act of Parliament, then this would detail exactly what the railway company was empowered and required to do. Such an act would have been a "local act", and these haven't been digitized by the parliamentary archives. Some annual compendiums of Westminster local acts that ended up in the US have been digitised by the Hathi Trust: volumes that are out of copyright in the US (up to the 1870s or so, iirc.) are fully available to view.

Another good place to look for news of railway developments is in old newspapers. Any promoters looking to get a railway built would want to find investors, and a local paper would be the ideal method to do so. If a company was formed to hire a surveyor and draft a bill, announcements of general meetings would be made in the papers, and there may be reports of the proceedings.

The National Library of Wales has a freely available copy of all their newspapers (from Wales) up to 1900. For other parts of the UK there are other websites, but generally ones that charge you.
 
Bevan Price

Bevan Price

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It is also worth looking through existing rail history books, some of which give details about other proposed railway schemes in the areas they are discussing.
 
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trebor79

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Thank you all for the replies, that should get me started. I'm intrigued as to what route this line would have taken, so I'm hoping to unearth any plans, surveys etc.
 
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bionic

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Local archives provide a treasure trove of information sometimes. It wont help you in East Anglia but while researching some London-based developments I found amazing amounts of information at the London Metropolitan Archives and the local history departments of the libraries in the specific area. Theres also the National Archive at Kew, which you can search online to see if they've got what you are after before you go.
 
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Andy873

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Here is one way:-

Most proposed lines will connect to an existing line somewhere, and these lines had official names run by existing railway companies.

So with this in mind I found out about a line that was never built, it was proposed to Parliament to build a line connecting at one end to the North Lancashire loop line (it's official name), with a route planned, and connecting at the other end to the Hellifield line.

When I was searching the London Gazette (official Parliament announcements paper - free online), i searched for

North Lancashire loop line

I found 19 references about it all to do with proposal and building the line - BUT I also came across a reference to it in 1885 with regards to another proposed line that would connect to it - which was never built.

Here is the link:
https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/25534/page/5740 you can see it under the "NOTICE is hereby given" section (right hand side of the page).

Unlike many websites that tell you they have a catalogue about "something", this site actually shows you the publication - so it's one place to start.

If you find a line is proposed here, then they were serious in building it - maybe after that you could email local libraries etc asking about any details.
 
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RLBH

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Andy873 said:
Unlike many websites that tell you they have a catalogue about "something", this site actually shows you the publication - so it's one place to start.
Click to expand...
And so armed with a reasonable notion of where each end of each line is, and which parishes it runs through, you can usually look up something like NLS Maps and start tracing a probable line. It's worth bearing in mind that the official notice in the London Gazette (and I imagine the Edinburgh Gazette for Scottish lines) will list each section separately, so you're liable to get rather short lines that are actually just chords of a junction Without looking at it on a map, Railway No. 3 of the proposed Accrington, Clitheroe and Sabden Railway seems to fit this description.
 
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Andy873

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Some very good points there RLBH!

The NLS maps (National library of Scotland) has some fantastic old OS maps which I use a lot, but as I've said before - not all the lines have their official names written on the maps.

On the OS maps 1913 & 1914, it is called the "Great Harwood Loop" and that tripped me up for a good while as it's officially known as "North Lancashire Loop". It was only when searching the London gazette for "Lancashire and Yorkshire railway" and "Great Harwood" did I find my first reference to the "North Lancashire Loop" - once I searched again with this I found 19 entries! So it's worth mentioning.

With regards to lines that were never built, using the London Gazette, I can see it was proposed to build the line in 1885.
The proposal was granted as an act of Parliament in 1886.
There are proposals to raise capital and purchase land as late as 1888.
But by 1889 proposal was made to abandon it.
The act was repealed in 1890.

It's amazing when you start with a railway company search first, together with a place name (town etc) what history you can find - all this without ever being drawn up on a map.
 
DerekC

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Thanks for all this very helpful stuff - prompts me to get on with something I have had in mind for a long time - tracing the route of the Bishops Waltham and Petersfield Railway.
 
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