TfL Corporate Archives - What's That?!

With the vaults of 55 Broadway literally full of company records stretching back to 1556, the organisation appointed its very 1st professional Archivist in 1991

Some records were moved to the LMA. Any record references at LMA that start 'ACC1297' are part of our collections. They're mainly the early records of the London General Omnibus Company, the Metropolitan Railway, and the Metropolitan District Railway

At 55 Broadway, work continued on sorting through the piles of paper stretching back centuries, to work out what we actually had and begin to list or catalogue it. This was to take many years!

We have a dedicated reading room on the Ground Floor of TfL's head office building 5 Endeavour Square and are open to the public and the business by prior appointment

Our oldest record is from 1556 and relates to land on which Aldgate Station now sits. Roughly 10% of our holdings are property records, dating from 1556 through to today

The 1830s saw the advent of omnibuses, horse drawn, and records on these can be found in our collections at LMA. Many reminiscences and images can also be found in our staff magazines

In 1863, the first underground passenger railway in the world opened in London. Except for the Victoria and Jubilee Lines, each underground line began its life as a private railway company. The records for these companies are in our collections and at LMA

From 1902, many of the underground railways, buses, and trams were under the control of a single private company. The records of this, the Underground Electric Railways (UERL), are largely to be found at LMA. The UERL was largely responsible for establishing the iconic roundel

The Victoria Line, London's first new tube for 50 years, opened in 1968. Since then the network has grown with the build of the Jubilee Line, London Overground, and the Elizabeth Line. The design and construction records for all of these can be found in the Archives collections

The transport records relating to the 2012 Games amount to over 60,000 digital and physical files. Some are already available to consult and we're working on cataloguing the remainder to make those available also

Each year London hosts major events such as Notting Hill Carnival, New Years Day Parade, Pride. Often there are royal state occasions and regularly there are big concerts and sports events across the capital. The archive collections show how TfL plans the transport for these 

The Archive collections reflect all areas of the work of TfL and our predecessor companies. We have over 170,000 physical files and items and over 25TB of digital records

A major part of our job is to continue to collect records into the collections, so that they can be kept for future generations to look at and learn from