Series details: CRDA/37

As a consequence of the process of privatising British Rail (BR) between 1993 and 1997 the British Railways Board (BRB) identified a need to develop and improve its records management procedures. Records management was given a high priority to assist the Board in defending against potentially expensive litigation resulting from privatisation, but also to comply with their obligation to keep historic records, to assist in negotiations, and to demonstrate compliance with legislation and regulatory requirements. This led to a decision that records from all business units and divisions of BR should be retained, including contracts, agreements and leases, licences, board minutes and associated papers, formal company documentation and statutory notices. The Board's Secretariat was initially responsible for records management but as privatisation progressed and the privatisation archive grew in size, responsibility was delegated to a Transitional Team that was established to support the transfer of the Board's post privatisation responsibilities.

As the rail privatisation process progressed, an archive consisting of some 7,500 boxes containing 1.5-2 million documents was established at BRB headquarters. Individual members of the BRB Transitional Team took responsibility for specific sections of the archive, and five separate databases were created to assist with the management of the archive. By late 1997 a number of issues had arisen that required the BRB to develop a more simplified strategy for managing the privatisation archive. The sale of the Board's premises at Euston House and relocation to their current premises at Whittles House, a requirement for duplicate copies of certain key documents to be held away from the main archive, and the decision to disband the Transitional Team created difficulties in managing the archive efficiently. In addition the closure of Euston House led to a significant increase in the physical size of the archive from 7,500 boxes to 10,000 boxes by the end of 1997. At the time of the transfer of the first dataset to NDAD in 2000, the archive contained 11,000 boxes. Following the move to Whittles House, the privatisation archive was placed in a commercial storage facility. Before the archive was transferred to storage, however, the BRB had reached the decision to make key papers available to staff electronically. As a first step the Transitional Team's five databases were merged in to a single Microsoft Access database containing details of approximately 91,000 records. In the dataset transferred to NDAD in 2000, details of these documents were stored in the Documents table, reference CRDA/37/DS/1/1. Following a tender process Rank Xerox were appointed as contractors to provide a full electronic archive that used the Access database as a catalogue linking to selected images of documents from the privatisation archive.1 The database remained in use until the BRB was wound up in 2003. At that time, responsibility for the database devolved to BRB's successor the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA). A second transfer to NDAD, comprising an updated version of the database, took place in August 2003; the Documents table (CRDA/37/DS/2/1) contained details of an additional 2000 documents, making a total of approximately 93,000 records. The other tables were largely unchanged.

The British Rail Electronically Archived Documents (BREAD) system was developed for the Privatisation Transitional Team of the British Railways Board by an external contractor, Rank Xerox. The system had its origins in five separate databases developed by members of the Privatisation Transitional Team to assist with the management of the largely paper based privatisation archive. When the BRB was wound up in 2003, responsibility for the privatisation database passed to the Strategic Rail Authority.

The BREAD (British Rail Electronically Archived Documents) system established by Rank Xerox for the BRB consisted of three components: the Access database, which acted as a catalogue; an Optika FilePower document management system that controlled the storage and retrieval of images of BRB documents; and an Oracle database, that was used to provide a link between the Access database and the images in the document management system.

Each record in the Access database contains a brief description of the material to which the record relates, the BRB Department (or subsidiary company if appropriate) that had generated the material, correspondence reference, originator and time frame. To enable documents to be found, searches could be made by document category, by BRB department (for which there are 20 departmental codes), by subsidiary company (189 codes), or by text.2 There are twelve document categories defined in the database (in the DoCGroupID table), and these are described in more detail below. Several other document categories occur in the Documents table but are not defined in the database. These are "KOLD", "MBLIN", "MBLINK" (all appear in both datasets) and "FIN" (which appears only in the 2003 dataset).

Document categories

• Blue Ink documents: mainly, signed contracts, licences or other legal documents
• BRIS (British Rail Infrastructure Services) Data Room documents which were scrutinised by potential purchasers prior to making bids for companies awaiting privatisation. Documents include financial analyses and asset registers, contracts both procurement and supply, personnel lists, accommodation, transfer schemes
• Other Data Rooms, as BRIS but for Central Services and Freight Companies
• Key Audit Trail Documentation providing brief confirmation that sales have been undertaken in accordance with due process
• Minutes of BR Board including Board Executive and other senior BRB committees responsible for making decisions relating to aspects of privatisation
• TOC (Train Operating Company) Board Minutes including minutes from both Operational Management Board meetings and meetings of the Company Directors
• Meeting papers, also meeting papers relating to TOC Committees including supporting papers for Board Meetings
• Working papers of various senior BRB personnel involved in the privatisation process
• Sales Bibles: essentially the solicitor's working papers relating to the sale of specific businesses. The papers are almost exclusively copies of documents such as Transfer Schemes, financial papers and key correspondence held elsewhere in the Privatisation Archive
• Solicitors' Correspondence covering key issues which may relate to the sale of several businesses
• Transfer Schemes were the mechanism used under the auspices of the Railways Act 1993 to transfer to subsidiary companies certain activities of the Board and the associated assets, liabilities and staff. This transfer enabled those activities of the Board undertaken by the subsidiary to be sold or otherwise transferred to the Private Sector. The Transfer Scheme documentation includes authorisation from the Secretary of State, asset/liability listings, contracts etc

No accruals are expected. The 2003 dataset was transferred to NDAD as a final state snapshot of the database.

The British Rail Electronically Archived Documents datasets and related dataset documentation are public records under the Public Records Acts 1958 and 1967. Records of the British Railways Board are held in The National Archives under the reference AN186.

Access to the British Rail Electronically Archived Documents datasets and related dataset documentation is closed for 30 years.

Copyright in the British Rail Electronically Archived Documents system is vested in the British Railways Board and its successor the Strategic Rail Authority.

The data derived from the British Rail Electronically Archived Documents datasets is subject to registration under the Data Protection Act. Subject access to the data is permitted.

The language of the materials is English.

Documents relating to the British Rail Electronically Archived Documents datasets have been transferred to NDAD. For further details, see the Dataset Documentation Catalogue.

The BREAD system was run on PCs connected to a Novell Netware 3.2 server, and these were used to access the Microsoft Access database and Optika FP Multi document management software. The server was connected to two additional PCs; one acting as a server for Optika FilePower, the other running the Oracle database linking the catalogue database to the images. This in turn linked to a jukebox which held optical disks containing the image files.

At the time of the transfer of the first dataset to NDAD in 2000, the BREAD electronic archive ran under Microsoft Windows NT4 (previously Windows 3.1).

The BREAD electronic archive used Microsoft Access 2 to provide a catalogue of the documents in the privatisation archive. Optika FilePower 4.5 document management system was used for the storage and retrieval of document images. Oracle 8.04 provided a link between the Access database and the document management system.

User access to the system was via the Microsoft Access catalogue database. Optika FilePower ran in the background allowing direct access to images located by searches made in the catalogue database.3

Both of the transfers to NDAD comprised a single dataset derived from Microsoft Access database files containing five distinct data tables. The first dataset transfer in 2000 also included the document images from the Optika system and supporting data files. More detailed information can be found in the Dataset catalogues.

The BREAD system was created as a catalogue of an existing body of documents, it is dynamic in the sense that ongoing editing of the data may still be possible but it was transferred to NDAD as a final state snapshot.

The Access database was created by merging five existing databases. Updates and searches were performed using database queries and on-screen forms.

Details of the content and transformation validation checks performed by NDAD staff on the BREAD dataset are contained in the catalogues of individual datasets.

Dataset catalogues provide more detailed information about individual datasets, and are currently available for the following dataset(s):

1. Dataset Documentation Catalogue document reference CRDA/37/DD/1/1 pp. 1-4

2. Dataset Documentation Catalogue document reference CRDA/37/DD/1/1 pp. 1-4

3. Dataset Documentation Catalogue document reference CRDA/37/DD/2/1