Until Britain's railways were nationalised in 1948 they were run by private enterprise. These companies provided secure employment, and in many families being employed on the railways was generational. Each company kept staff records with varying degrees of complexity, but unfortunately some of them have not survived.
The National Archives (TNA) at Kew holds records of private railway companies before nationalisation; see the two research guides on its site at . However, an earlier consolidation took place in 1923, as a result of the 1921 Railways Act. The vast majority of the UK's hundreds of railway companies, many running small branch lines, were grouped together into new companies often referred to as the ‘Big Four’: the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS), the Great Western Railway (GWR), the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) and the Southern Railway (SR). Today records are only thought to survive
