BR Letter Reference Codes

[Andy873]

Can we decipher the following BR letter reference code - PR 358/4?

This is on a Precis concerning the proposal to close the loop line, and it comes from Preston's Divisional Manager's office, so PR must mean Preston?

358 The 358th letter send out in a particular month?

/4 Does this mean April?

The precis isn't dated but has to before a meeting with staff at Blackburn on 13th of May 1964.

 

[NER1621]

“PR” just means “print reference” i.e. it’s telling you that the number code is the unique print reference code for that document. As to how the rest of the code was generated I don’t know, although the /4 denoting “issued in April” sounds plausible.

 

[eastwestdivide]

Is the reference handwritten, typed on a typewriter, or printed as part of the stationery?

 

[Dr Hoo]

As with previous post, was this a ‘letter’/ typescript or a commercially printed poster/leaflet?
A printer would have their own ‘job’ codes.

 

[Andy873]

Is the reference handwritten, typed on a typewriter, or printed as part of the stationery?

The whole precis including the ref number is typed.

 

[Rescars]

Just a guess, but the "/4" may indicate that this is the fourth in a sequence of documents on a particular topic. As the document is typed, "fourth version of the document" seems less likely, as does "Print Reference" for "PR", unless the number refers to a printed document which formed the basis of the typed precis. If the document is more like a memo or letter, could the "PR" be the initials of the official under whose authority it was issued? I fear that British Railways document registry coding is a topic on which there are few experts!

 

[Elecman]

358 would be the file number for the proposal in the DMs filing system

 

[Gloster]

PR - Proposed Redundancies? However, I wouldn’t put money on that: having once having had to file all the accumulated correspondence of two Areas when they were amalgamated I know that, although there was a logic behind references, it could be difficult to work out. One letter is unlikely to reveal the secret.

 

[Beebman]

Just a guess, but the "/4" may indicate that this is the fourth in a sequence of documents on a particular topic. As the document is typed, "fourth version of the document" seems less likely, as does "Print Reference" for "PR", unless the number refers to a printed document which formed the basis of the typed precis. If the document is more like a memo or letter, could the "PR" be the initials of the official under whose authority it was issued? I fear that British Railways document registry coding is a topic on which there are few experts!

Over the years I've been trying to collect a full set of the supplements to the 'London Midland Region Working Instructions for A.C. Electrified Lines' which give local instructions as each OHLE section of the southern WCML was being energised during the 1960s (it's a particular area of interest I have). The main 'Working Instructions' document is numbered BR.31170 and the supplements are numbered in sequence as BR.31170/x where the 'x' is the individual supplement number - as an example, there's BR.31170/18 covering Queens Park-Euston and BR.31170/22 covering Macclesfield-Colwich Jct.

 

[6Gman]

Can we decipher the following BR letter reference code - PR 358/4?

This is on a Precis concerning the proposal to close the loop line, and it comes from Preston's Divisional Manager's office, so PR must mean Preston?

358 The 358th letter send out in a particular month?

/4 Does this mean April?

The precis isn't dated but has to before a meeting with staff at Blackburn on 13th of May 1964.

Would you be able to post a photo of the document? It might help to work out a context.

At this stage I would suspect that file 358 covered the closure proposal and that the various individual papers would be 358/1, 358/2 etc.

Many years ago I worked in the Forward Planning Section at Crewe and that is how various schemes/ proposals were filed. If the last one was 224 then the next one would be 225 with relevant papers coded /1, /2, /3 - as much as anything so we could spoty if anything was missing!

 

[Dr Hoo]

For supplements (not really relevant for the OP) the ‘pro-number’ (progressive number) was essential to know that you had all of the revisions.
In my first supervisory role, which included checking staff’s publications, I often found that critical updates had been ‘lost’ or forgotten about. In the days before widespread availability of local photocopiers this was often hard to remedy.
In my experience each area/ division/ region had its own numbering system for general administration.

 

[Andy873]

Would you be able to post a photo of the document?

I would love to, but can't due to copyright.

Right, I've managed to find a very faint reference on the second precis, 358/19. So it seems the Preston office used 358 as the constant, and the /x as the latest in the series.

The BR (LM Region) Chief Establishment & Staff Office, Euston letters it's the other way round. I have two letters 6600/24 and 6601/24. So from this office the /24 is the constant and the 66xx is the individual number.

Going back to my opening post question, the /4 from the Preston office does not denote April, just an individual number in a series.

Thanks all for helping me understand these references.

 

[Gloster]

I would love to, but can't due to copyright.

Right, I've managed to find a very faint reference on the second precis, 358/19. So it seems the Preston office used 358 as the constant, and the /x as the latest in the series.

The BR (LM Region) Chief Establishment & Staff Office, Euston letters it's the other way round. I have two letters 6600/24 and 6601/24. So from this office the /24 is the constant and the 66xx is the individual number.

Going back to my opening post question, the /4 from the Preston office does not denote April, just an individual number in a series.

Thanks all for helping me understand these references.

Not necessarily. It could be that two matters are being run in parallel and the /24 is so that the two letters at a certain stage can be directly related to each other. Personally, I feel that without a great deal of correspondence to study and draw conclusions from you are on a hiding to nothing.

 

[Andy873]

without a great deal of correspondence to study and draw conclusions from you are on a hiding to nothing.

Yes, I think you're right with this one, but I do look very closely at all sorts of things and some have paid off, whereas most like this one doesn't, but it's always worth a go!

 

[6Gman]

Yes, I think you're right with this one, but I do look very closely at all sorts of things and some have paid off, whereas most like this one doesn't, but it's always worth a go!

And I, for one, greatly appreciate the way you take us into half-forgotten but fascinating byways of railway history.

 

[Clarence Yard]

It is very rare to allocate individual letters to individual pro numbers. That is a nightmare for any filing system - you usually group the activity so correspondence would usually be allocated to the relevant progressive file.

In this case PR 358 would seem to indicate Preston Division 358 with the progressive numbers indicating the activity.

In some cases you could have an identical progressive number if the activity was identical. In my early days on BR, I used to be a tech clerk at various depots and offices on the KX Division and when I was at the AME KX, I had a series of progressive General files for the ODM section (series PG) but also a series of geographically based files for line section and equipment. A good example would be the Northern City Line to Moorgate, part of which we coded P43. The P series suffix letters were then /1 General, /2 Boilers, /3 Lifts, etc.

So P43/3 was Essex Road Lifts but P49/3 would be Letchworth Lifts. Lifts also had a generic file in the PG series. Filing was traditionally on shelves or in metal filing cabinets but I managed to get two hanging file cabinets so the files (in manilla folders) could be easily located and withdrawn. Cross referencing files could be a pain because you might have to copy correspondence but around 1980, the depots got photocopiers!

I always kept file correspondence in reverse date order on the file. At the divisional office we always had a card backing to each file with a star binder inserted (with appropriate card rings top and bottom) to put the correspondence on. I used medium star binders so when the “pad” got too tight I could let another binder on top, interlinking it with the original one. When a pad got too thick, you just created another one, marking it “Pad 2” and keeping Pad 1 handy in case someone wanted it.

Divisional Office KX tended to use shelves, hanging files and filing cabinets. Correspondence files could sometimes be bent in half (with the card side showing, named and numbered) and then kept in wooden tray boxes in a shelve cabinet. I still have the KX Deltic component files in their original two trays, the files being divided into firstly the “owner” in the section (KM2), then the section file reference for Deltics (130) and finally the pro number indicating the subject. So Deltic Horns are in file KM2/130/28.

Each depot, station or office would organise its paperwork differently, according to need or custom and practise. Not everything would be file referenced. Individual staff files in a cabinet would be sorted by name (or section/name), my loco shopping files were organised by loco number and my statutory F88 lifting equipment and tackle registers at the ODM would be organised by geography so that the fitting staff who needed to see them could access them easily.

In the computer age of e-mail and individual correspondence, running a filing system together with all the associated clerical activity now seems like a very long time ago!

 

[Andy873]

without a great deal of correspondence to study and draw conclusions from

Agreed, to that end I will be contacting the NA for copies of a set of letters covering the period from 1963 to 1968, so we will see what that brings and see if there's any logic / pattern to them.

And I, for one, greatly appreciate the way you take us into half-forgotten but fascinating byways of railway history.

@6Gman, thanks for that, although my questions are usually specific, they may just help someone's research apart from mine.

 

[Belperpete]

It is very rare to allocate individual letters to individual pro numbers. That is a nightmare for any filing system - you usually group the activity so correspondence would usually be allocated to the relevant progressive file.

Agreed. Correspondence would have the file number on it, but each individual letter in that file wouldn't have its own number. That is why, when referring to correspondence, you always quoted the file reference and date. Remember that correspondence was usually two way, and you would quote your reference and the recipient's reference - that wouldn't be possible if the reference numbers changed for every letter.

Giving individual numbers to each bit of correspondence is only something that came in with computerisation, as computers tend to object to documents (which confusingly are called files on the computer) stored in the same place having identical names.

I can recall that in S&T, the files generally had card front and back covers, either formed of two A4 (or foolscap) pieces of card, or one A3 folded in two. They started with small star binders, which got replaced by successively larger versions as the file filled up, until it got so full as to be unmanageable and you started another folder - but with the same reference number. I think we called them file 1 , file 2, etc with the date ranges shown on each file, the current one being dd/mm/yyyy - (blank).