Genealogy Chat

Hoping someone might be able to help point me in the right direction as to where I need to go to find out about a John McCracken born 1921 and who is listed on the 1861 Census as a Railway Inspector. The address shown on the census is in Ipswich so I would guess John was an inspector in that area. Census also shows that he and his wife were from Cheshire so perhaps the move to Suffolk was due to the railway.
I saw on the National Archives site that there is access to railway employee records if you go and visit it them but I got a bit confused by all the options. Could anyone with a bit more experience help please! Many thanks
Leanne x

Thre is a site called railway ancestors, may be a place to start looking for info.

Annx

I am going to the National Archives on Friday. If you can work out what would be worth a look from their research guides, please email me with the details. I will have a little spare time and could have a quick search.

David

Thank you for the kind offer to have a look for me....to be honest I am totally confused by what I have read on the National Archives so far so dont really know where to start looking. If I can make any sense of it before Friday then I shall get back to you :) Leanne x

Leanne

You have to know which railway company he was working for in order to find records at the National Archives. You can probably find out online - just look to see which companies were operating in the area he lived in and the research guide to Railway records on the TNA site will show what they have for that company.

On the 1861 Census he was living in Ipswich, and I would guess that is the Great Eastern Railway and 1855-1930 dates would seem to fit ok. The four options available do not seem to show any dates that are appropriate for 1861 though...unless I have totally misunderstood how it works! x

Agreed, the 4 refs on the Catalogue don't seem to fit what you want. May be worth searching the Catalogue using various search terms like his name, Inspector, or Ipswich and using RAIL as the series to search.

I agree it seems confusing. I browsed the index entries in the catalogue for Great Eastern (founded 1862). There are records in RAIL 227, ranging from 445 to about 553. All are staff records of some sort.

It is not really clear what they hold. I will have a look at one out of curiosity (RAIL 227/459) seems a possibility. It seems that the numbers are employee reference numbers but there does not seem be an index.

Thank you again for offering to look sorry that I cant be more helpful with giving you more information.

I looked at Rail 227/459

It is a large ledger with one page per employee, giving details of their career and pay etc. About 400 of them! No index. Your man is not there. There must have been an index.

Quite happy to look again sometime with more information. If you would like a photo of a page to see what it looks like, send me an email.

David