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Researching the history of railway architecture

The earliest railways were horse-drawn wooden wagonways used in the 17th and 18th centuries 
- mainly to haul coal. Cornish engineer Richard Trevithick built the first steam locomotive for a railway in 1804. Passenger traffic was insignificant until Stephenson's famous Rocket proved in 1829 that passengers could be carried quickly. Soon companies were springing up by Private Acts of Parliament to build railways for passengers and goods in many parts of Britain - the 'Railway Mania' of the 1830s and 1840s. The coming of the railways changed the face of Britain: see towns, inns, entertainment and bridges.

Urban underground railways began in London in 1863 with the Metropolitan Railway, which ran steam trains for 40 years. By the turn of the century there were several lines all run by separate companies, some experimenting with electrification. Most were combined by 1913 as the Underground Electric Railways of London. Then in 1933 all the lines were nationalised and became the London Passenger Transport Board (London Transport). Charles Holden was the architect who gave the Underground its distinctively modern look. From the 1920s to the 1940s he designed stations for Underground Electric Railways and then for London Transport.

• Ashley, P., Whistle Stops: Railway architecture (English Heritage 2001)
• Biddle, G. and Nock, O.S., The Railway Heritage of Britain: 150 years of railway architecture and engineering (1983). A gazetteer covering England, Scotland and Wales. Appendix: British Rail's listed buildings.
• Clinker, C.R., Railway History Sources: a handlist of the principal sources of original material with notes and guidance on its use (1976).
• Meeks, Carol L. V., The Victorian Railroad Station: An architectural history (Yale UP 1956).
• Menear, L., London's Underground Stations (1983)
• Ottley, G., Railway History: a guide to sixty-one collections in libraries and archives in Great Britain (Library Association 1973).
• Pevsner, N., A History of Building Types (1976), chap.14: Railway stations.
• Railway Archive: The Last Main Line examines the history and impact of the Great Central Railway's 'London Extension'. Includes an online database of photographs of the Great Central Railway's construction.
  

Primary sources

• The archive of the Great Western Railway, including drawings by Isambard Kingdom Brunel is at Wiltshire and Swindon Archives.
• The English Heritage National Monuments Record Centre has a collection of photographs of railway stations in the 1950s. There is an online catalogue [pdf file].
• Bristol University Library Brunel Collection contains journals, diaries, correspondence, notebooks and drawings of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, including material on the Great Western Railway.
• London's Transport Museum has a collection of over 14,000 historic photographs, some of which relate to the underground.
• The Railway and Canal Historical Society holds a collection of photographs and other archival material. Their website provides a list of archives with relevant collections.
• George Meason wrote guides to railway lines in the mid-19th century, for example The Illustrated Guide to the South Eastern Railway (1853), which was published in facsimile (1987), and The Official Illustrated Guide to the Great Western Railway (1861). These contain hundreds of engravings, mainly of places along the line, but including railway stations, bridges and tunnels.