National Railway Museum York
The Leonard Raisbeck Archive held by the National Railway Museum (NRM) contains some of the earliest, never-seen-before papers from the dawn of the Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR) and documents the life and work of Leonard Raisbeck, one of the S&DR’s solicitors, who contributed to the early development of the line.
The archive has been fully digitised and 48% of the items have been transcribed by remote volunteers recruited through the Friends of the Stockton & Darlington Railway. The archive catalogue, complete with digitised images and transcripts, was launched on 14 April on the Science Museum Group’s Collections Online portal: https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/…/leonard…
Some of the stories from the collection are also illustrated on new webpage on the National Railway Museum’s website: https://www.railwaymuseum.org.uk/objects…/leonard-raisbeck
The publication of the catalogue was celebrated at a press event held on Friday morning at Locomotion in Shildon. It was attended by archivists from the National Railway Museum, members of the FS&DR and a descendent of Leonard Raisbeck who found out about their ancestor’s archive through the FS&DR.