THE GREENHOW COLLECTION

This collection of Midland Railway documents (Item RFBMCT25883) was recovered from the Permanent Way Depot at Settle by railwayman Norman Greenhow.

His timely action saved from the skip a unique set of papers, which give an insight into the daily activities of the PW Depot covering No 1 Section of the Settle & Carlisle line (Settle Junction to Hawes Junction and the branch to Hawes) as well as part of the "Little North Western" line to Clapham and the main line to Settle Junction from just north of Skipton. This area was in the charge of an Inspector and the papers cover the periods from 1876 to 1883; 1888 to 1892 and 1899 to 1925. There are thus some gaps and, within the periods, coverage is not uniform and the quantity of surviving documents varies from year to year. But even allowing for these deficiencies, the records are sufficiently comprehensive to give a clear picture of day to day life for the men responsible for maintaining this section of the Midland main line.

The collection features reports to the Inspector by the various gangers of events and activities on the section of line for which they were responsible and includes details of arrangements for relaying and the periodical records of materials used and in stock at the various locations (including ganger's huts). Many individual names are recorded of men who worked on, and lived close to, the line during the period. Also there are numerous reports of accidents to individuals whilst at work on the line.

Friends of the Settle & Carlisle Line (FoSCL) have deposited in the Study Centre their archive of Midland and LMS Railway material, a large part of which emanated from the Settle PW Depot and is clearly contemporary with the Greenhow Collection. All such items have been annotated accordingly in the description field on the Study Centre catalogue.