Introduction
The Railway & Canal Historical Society preserves for posterity the photographs, drawings, maps, plans, and other media images collected by our members during their lifetimes. The hard-copy images are stored, after being digitised, at a secure facility designed for historical artefacts, and this Online Media Archive presents just a small, but growing, selection of the over 200,000 images we hold.
Some of the images were collected by the original members of the Society (founded in 1954), and were photographed in even earlier times. They record the transport scene in the UK and elsewhere going back nearly a century (or earlier where the member had been given the media collections of their forebears).
The images are captioned with a (hopefully) useful and accurate Title, and many also have a more detailed Description. We are enhancing these as further information is provided.

Navigating the Archive
The Archive comprises a series of nested Albums that may be browsed at leisure. Primarily, they are organised first by transport mode, and then by company and line of route. Each Album displays, on one or more pages, a number of thumbnail images and clicking on any of them (either the image or its Title) will bring up either a further Album page, or one of two alternative views of the image itself. This is the straightforward way to “drill down” into the Archive.
The images may take a few seconds to appear, as they are quite large files in order to display all of the available detail.
Above the images on each page is a “breadcrumb trail” that displays the route taken through the Archive to reach the image concerned. Clicking on any of the links in the breadcrumb trail will open the page concerned.
Alternatively, any term of interest may be typed into the search box, towards the right-hand end of the title bar, and an Album page will be created displaying the results.

Codes
Within the descriptions of canal images are location codes based on the system used by the Canal & River Trust (CRT). They are in square brackets, [ ]. For example, the CRT codes for the Oxford Canal start OX and have the form OX-005-100 where the first set of numbers define the one-kilometre length along the canal. and the second set the number of metres into that km length. Also in the description, there are codes in curly brackets, { }. These are CRT Asset codes, if there is one for the features in the image. The last set of numbers define the asset within a km section, not a distance.
The descriptions of the British railway images also often include location codes, and these are based upon the Engineers’ Line Reference (ELR) convention used by the national railway industry, and including the milepost mileage. They are in round brackets and take the form, for example, (PRS @ 14m 54ch), where PRS is the Engineers Line Reference, and 14m 54ch is the milepost mileage in miles and chains (80 chains = 1 mile).

Comments
Accompanying each image is a Comments link (initially displaying “No Comments”), and clicking on this will open an online form where additions or corrections may be proposed to any of the information provided. We welcome constructive comments, all of which will be reviewed by Society experts, and the image information updated where appropriate.
We do have a number of fascinating images lacking captions, so we rely on interested viewers to provide the most accurate information about each one, and on subsequent comments to improve it.

Copyright
Our members have collected the media over the years from a variety of sources, so it is possible that the copyright of some will be owned by people or organisations other than the Society. We have taken all reasonable steps to avoid publishing such images but, if we have inadvertently done so, then we apologise to the copyright owner and will comply with any reasonable request to remove the image upon receiving proof of copyright ownership.

Publication of Our Media
Images in which the Society owns the copyright may be used for research purposes, including publication in books and journals of academic worth, with our prior consent and free of charge, providing our copyright, and attribution to the Collection and Photographer, are credited, and that we receive a gratis copy of the publication. We reserve the right to charge for use of our media for other commercial purposes.
Where copyright is owned by another person or organisation then any use of the images, other than for non-commercial research, must be authorised by the owner of the copyright. The Society disclaims any responsibility for any copyright infringement that may be caused as this will be contrary to the conditions under which the image was made available.

Volunteering
The Online Archive can only develop through volunteer effort. There are a wide variety of roles that might be of interest, including scanning, image editing, captioning, responding to comments from visitors to the website, and transporting the archive boxes to other volunteers. If you feel you can help, please do contact us and, if you are not already a member, please consider joining the Society.

Donations of Media
If you are looking for a suitable home for your media collection, please contact us as we may be able to help, including advising on how you can assist the Society by preparing your images and their captions.

Contact Us
If you would like to help, or need advice on a future home for your media collection, please contact media@rchs.org.uk.