Catalogue description Railway Sidings Agreements

The advantages to businesses, with premises adjacent to the line of one of the railway companies, of having direct access to the railway were obvious. The railway companies in their turn were permitted to make breaches in their fences and to allow access to their lines provided suitable provision was made for safety and maintenance. The majority of documents in this series are signed agreements, with plans, between railway companies and businesses to build and maintain sidings on the latter's premises with a direct link, suitably protected by gates, onto the railway. Most of the agreements have attached to them later correspondence about maintenance of the siding and occasionally about the termination of the agreement and removal of the track.

All these agreements appear to have been terminated, and were stored in the Central Records Office at Euston. The bulk of them were made by the London, Midland and Scottish and the London and North Eastern Railways and their predecessors, and a few by the British Transport Commission and the British Railways Board.