Trams, buses and TGV’s – drawings from the GEC archives

I have been cataloguing the GEC Traction archive for the past 7 months. The archive is the most extensive archive collection held at the National Railway Museum and I have just finished cataloguing the vast amount of drawings.

There are 1013 boxes and folders of drawings and within the boxes are 824 separate drawing rolls ranging from 1 to 250 drawings per roll.

There are a huge variety of drawings ranging from export locomotives to anti-aircraft guns used by the Royal Navy in World War Two, hundreds of mechanical component and wiring diagrams and a few ‘holy grails’ of general arrangements for British Railways locomotives including the Class 22 and 84. I have picked out a few to whet your appetite.


Arrangement of destination indicators for a Manchester Corporation bus
(Ref: GEC/2/2/2/352)


Diesel electric locomotive general arrangement, a Rhodesia Class 40, 1958
(Ref: GEC/2/2/2/82)





Electric wagon Post Office (London) Railway, 1938
(Ref: GEC/2/2/2/140)


General arrangement of prototype train for Post Office (London) Railway
(Ref: GEC/2/2/2/179)





General arrangement D.D.T.C centre entrance car, 1936
(Ref: GEC/2/2/2/381)


S.N.C.F T.V.G. development train for high speed, c 1983
(Ref: GEC/2/2/1/69)


Although the above drawings have been created by English Electric Company and GEC Alsthom Ltd, the archive contains many more by GEC Traction, Associated Electrical Industries, Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company, Vulcan Foundry Ltd, Robert Stephenson & Hawthorns and Beyer Peacock to name a few.

The next stage of the project is to catalogue the 500 + boxes of the business and technical records. The project, funded by the National Archives Cataloguing Grant Scheme finishes at the end of September.

If you would like a copy of any of these drawings, please email Copy.Service@nrm.org.uk. All the drawings and the rest of the collection will be available to view in Search Engine when the catalogue goes live on AdLib later this year. For other queries on the archive you can email me on charlotte.dennard@nrm.org.uk

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