When the York Locomotive Shed was cleared out to make way for the National Railway Museum, a large number of London and North Eastern Railway / British Rail Staff Cards were discarded. Those from 1923 to the 1960s, were deposited with the Society of Genealogists in 1999 and have now been cleaned, sorted, indexed and made available for inspection.

The 2846 cards list 2402 employees of London and North Eastern Railway from 1923 until the 1960’s, by which time it had been nationalised and become part of British Rail. Please note that we do not have staff cards for everyone who worked for LNER. Most of those listed are men, except for 134 female cleaners. There is a great diversity of information provided and the cards may contain any of the following:

Name (with title Miss / Mrs if a female cleaner)
Height
Date of birth (many stretching back to the 1880’s)
Date of commencement of employment (many started aged 15 or 16)
Date of leaving employment (careers ranged from a month to 45 years)
Reasons for leaving (often at the obligatory age of sixty or sixty-five)
Depots and stations where employed
Career progression and promotions
Eyesight / medical examinations
Sickness or injuries
Admonishments, punishments, rewards or commendations. These are noted on the reverse of the cards. The latter two are scarce, often being awarded for working during a strike. The former two sometimes cover a whole card, particularly in the case of drivers. Offences include ignoring red light signals and near misses with passing freight trains.

The amount of information varies from employee to employee. Brief casuals often had only their names and dates of coming and going noted, whilst one long-term employee’s card contains a complete record of every piece of uniform issued to him, with size and description. Some families are traceable through several generations, and first cousin relationships are sometimes apparent.

Society volunteers Elizabeth Gray and Alison Ross have been carefully cleaning, boxing and indexing the cards and they can now be consulted in the Lower Library.

NB This online index only indicates those for whom a card exists, it does not give information contained on the cards. If a visit to the library to view the card is not possible a photocopy may be ordered through the Society's Search and Copy service at http://www.sog.org.uk/library/searches.shtml