The Archive of the Caledonian Railway Association is designed to provide a useful research resource on the operations of the Caledonian Railway Company and its constituents, subsidiaries and successors, for all researchers regardless of their background or experience. Although the focus of the collection is upon the Caledonian Railway Company, the archive also holds multiple items from other railway companies that deal with the lines and routes used by the Caledonian and/or areas/aspects where the railway companies overlapped. In addition items from Canals, Docks and Steamers operated as subsidiaries of the Caledonian Railway Company are also included.

Records related to the Caledonian Railway are also held in the national repositories, libraries and line societies. An introduction and contact details to these is set out in Research Resources.

Searching the Archive

The Archive can be searched by navigating through the catalogue from the main index below or by using the website search box above.  Using the advanced search function allows you to restrict results to the Archive Catalogue only rather than searching across the whole website.  The full catalogue is not yet listed - some of the detailed lists of drawings are still in progress.  Photographs are catalogued through a separate online database accessible here. Members can contact the webmaster for a login at webmaster@crassoc.org.uk. Some of the photograph catalogue within CRA7 is available as pdf downloads which include a thumbnail of the image as well as the full description.  These are linked within the main catalogue below.

Some examples of how to search the catalogue are given here highlighting just some of the ways that the archive could be used by prospective researchers. It is only a guide to help you get started, as each researcher will have their individual areas of interest.

A printed or pdf version of the catalogue can still be generated using the "printer-friendly version" link at the foot of each catalogue page.  This will generate a list of the current section of the archive plus all that section's sub-sections, which can be printed as is or printed to a pdf file through your PC.  The full archive catalogue is generated using the printer-friendly link from this page - beware though that this generates a lengthy document.

The December 2022 update to the catalogue is now available and can be downloaded in a searchable pdf here.    Shown on the pdf are a number of on-line links to the sub-lists; however these are yet fully active or fully up-to-date, so contact the Archivist if you need any of these