NRS-16245 | Reports of the Department of Public Works from State Rail Authority

This set of the annual reports of the Department of Public Works Department was retained by the State Rail Authority of NSW (SRA). Most of these are the printed versions of the report which were presented to Parliament and form part of the parliamentary papers. They were probably retained because of the Department of Public Works for many years managed railway construction through its Railway and Tramway Construction and Metropolitan Railway Construction Branches They provide details of works in progress such as tunnels, bridges and railway lines as well as costs, length of lines, accounts. Also included are maps, graphs, illustrations and sketches of projects and building equipment.The reports are bound into volumes and arranged in chronological date order, however the series is incomplete. The volume numbers (1) to (8) have been imposed on the volumes by (SRA) for identification. Each report is indexed.Custody HistoryFrom 1955 until 2000 the State Rail Authority of New South Wales maintained an ‘in house archives’ consisting of the archival records of the Authority, its predecessor agencies and the private railway companies taken over by the government. The date ranges of the records were from 1849 until 2000. When the decision was made to close the ‘State Rail Archives’ the parts of the collection that were required as State archives were transferred to the State Records Authority of NSW. Those record series were incorporated into the State Records series system of archives control and were re-numbered.This series was formerly part of the State Rail Archives collection where it was identified as series R198. It may have been viewed in the State Rail Archives as series R198 and could have been previously cited as such in notes by researchers at State Rail Archives or in publications or unpublished works.