Record series
Survey and Field Books
VPRS 18342
1856 - 1994
Open
North Melbourne
Agencies
This record series was created by:
Surveyor-General's Department ( VA2921 ): 1856 - 1857
Department of Railways I ( VA2877 ): 1858 - 1871
Department of Railways and Roads ( VA2875 ): 1871 - 1877
Department of Railways 2 ( VA2965 ): 1877 - 1883
Railway Construction Board ( VA691 ): 1965 - 1980
State Transport Authority ( VA1038 ): 1983 - 1989
Public Transport Corporation ( VA2984 ): 1989 - 1994
Agencies responsible for this record series: Victorian Rail Track (VicTrack) ( VA 4616 ): 1997 - present
Date Range
Series date range: 1856 - 1994
Series in custody:
1856 - 1994
Contents in custody:
1856 - 1994
Function / Content
This series comprises field notebooks that were created and used during the preliminary investigations and surveys undertaken for the planning and construction of railway lines in Victoria.The form of the records are small notebooks that were used by the surveyor's in the field as they planned the routes of railway lines in Victoria. There are various types of books, including : Survey Level Books, Chainage and Curve Books, Survey Field Books, and various other types.
The majority of the books in this series are Survey Level Books, which contain information of the rise and fall of the elevations of sections of the railway lines, along with other notes and observations. These books generally contain hand drawn sketches of the proposed railway lines.
The Chainage and Curve Books contain hand drawings of line curves plus trigonometric calculations.
The Survey Field Books were the books used by surveyors in the field to record the data of the surveys.
How to use the records
Refer to the list of records in this series.Recordkeeping system
Many of the books have various, often multiple, numbers written on or printed on their covers, suggesting that in the past they once belonged to various recordkeeping systems. The final recordkeeping system that the books were part of was the Victorian Railways Plan Room system. As part of this system many of the books were given a record number and index cards were created for each book. However, only half of the books were incorporated into this system, although, otherwise there is no obvious difference between the books that were indexed and those that were not. It appears to have been random chance - at some date a number of cabinets were emptied and the books were placed in boxes, and these were the books that were not indexed. However, the boxes did retain the cabinet number that related to which cabinet the books were removed from.The different types of books were all located together (there were also a small number of other and later books found in other locations that have been added to this series), but the types were mixed up, and there was no apparent system of arrangement, (i.e. they were not arranged alphabetically, chronologically, numerically or geographically). Retrieval was by using the index cards for the books that had been indexed, and possibly some other means for the non-indexed books (possibly an older Index volume).
There were three sets of alphabetical index cards created; these were for the Survey Level Books, the Chainage and Curve Books, and the Survey Field Books. The information on the cards includes the record number, a brief description, and the location of the book in the Plan Room. The record number is a consecutive number with an 'R' prefix. The location number consists of a letter relating to the cabinet and a number for the shelf or pigeon hole. Where possible both the record number and the location numbers have been recorded in the list of records for this series (The location reference number is entered in square brackets)
The index card system appears to have been created about 1937. There is also some evidence of there once being a single volume that acted as an index to the all of the survey books; this may predate the index cards, however its current location and its exact contents is unknown.
Some of the later survey books appear to have been controlled by various other record numbering systems.
This series (VPRS 18342) is related to both VPRS 13626 Survey Field Books and VPRS 13627 Survey Level Books. It appears this series was retained by Public Transport Corporation (PTC) for operational purposes during the separation of the Vic track from PTC whereas the books in VPRS 13626 and VPRS 13627 were possibly not required for active use and therefore separated from this collection and top numbered with an R number. VPRS 13626 and VPRS 13627 appear to be a subset of this series.
