The National Railway Museum (NRM) in York has acquired a large photographic archive stretching back 80 years.

Containing more than 200,000 images, the collection consists of the original pictures taken by the official photographic unit for British Rail, and its predecessor, the London & North Eastern Railway.

The pictures, which were donated to the museum by private company Jarvis, will be added to the existing photographic archive housed in the museum’s £4m research centre, ‘Search Engine’.

Ed Bartholomew, the NRM’s senior curator, said: “This is a significant addition to the NRM’s world-class archive, especially as many of these photographs can be matched to existing items in the collection.”