VPRS 12904 Photographic Collection: Railway Negatives: Miscellaneous Systems

This series consists of photographic negatives created by the agencies responsible for managing the Victorian railways. It encompasses black and white and colour film negatives, black and white glass plate negatives and lantern slides.Between c 1990 and June 2000, all of the items in this series were maintained within a Photographic Collection that had been established by the Public Transport Corporation. This series is one of a number of series that have been created following transfer of the Photographic Collection to PROV.This particular series brings together a number of sequences of negatives which could not be brought together in the various series in which the contents of the library were arranged by PROV.In order to facilitate access and contribute to their long term preservation, Photographic Collection staff began in 1999 imaging a number of the negatives in this series. This program of imaging has been continued by PROV.MISCELLANEOUS SEQUENCE AVAILABLE FOR ONLINE RESEARCHThe specific sequence and the consignment that has been processed and which can be viewed online is:Jolimont Rail Yards c1917: (held in the P1 consignment)This relates to three copy negatives, of varying sizes, made by Victoria Railways photographic staff of a panoramic image taken of the entirety of the rail yards.ALPHA NUMERIC SEQUENCES TO BE PROCESSEDRailway Investigation Officers file negativesThis sequence consists of [b/w or colour or both?]film negatives taken during investigations carried out by investigations officers about deaths, accidents, graffiti, etc in the train system. The photographs are believed to have formed part of the investigation file retained by the Railway Investigation Office.These negatives date between c. 1968 - c. 1998. The existence of either a register or index for these negatives is unknown.1886 Exhibition negativesThis sequence consists of black and white glass plate negatives that depict various locations within the Victori's rail system and was produced for the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London. The images were taken by Mrs Emma Nettleton during October and November 1885. Details of the tender that Mrs Nettkleton was awarded and the images she took can be found on inwards correspondence file no. 643 in VPRS 425/P0, unit 73.The existence of either a register or index for these negatives is unknown. Information thought to be about these negatives has been located by a railways researcher in a file within VPRS 425/P0, unit 73, file number 643.Track clearance negativesThese [b/w or colour or both?] [film?] negatives were originally created to document the clearance the existence between tracks and fixed structures such as platforms, railway buildings, etc through out the metropolitan area of Melbourne. Approximately 38,000 negatives were thought to have been created, The only negatives from this number that appear to have been retained by the former photographic library, and hence, in this series relate to the Jolimont Rail Yard from circa 1974.The existence of either a register or index to these images is unknown.'Ken Hubbard Collection'These sequence consists of negatives and some prints that were made by Mr Ken Hubbard. Mr Hubbard was a Victoran Railways photographer and the images in this consignment were not sorted or identified for inclusion in the Railways official photographic negative sequences. The images were also never sorted or identified by the staff of the photographic library.Large sized glass plate negativesThis sequence consists of large sized glass plate negatives that appears to have been created in order to produce large size reproductions, possibly in order to intricate detail. Some of the images in this sequence are of diagrams. It would also appear that some of these negatives are effectively larger scale copies of images from regular (and thus smaller) glass plate negatives found in other photographic library series.Each negative was given a multiple number (hypothetical number, 3.5.9) which refers to the original storage location at Victorian Railways within a special glass plate cabinet. In this system, the first number (from hypothetical example, number 3) related to the cabinet, the second number (5 from the above hypothetical number) represented the drawer within that cabinet and the final number (hypothetical number 9) represented the position of the negative within the drawer.