These cover various owners of the railway system until the late 1980s when the railways were broken up. This series continues until State Rail ceased to exist when it merged with other bodies. For a lengthy period it also covered street tramways.
The name of the bodies did vary but was generally the NSW Railways, NSW Railways and Tramways, Department of Railways or something similar. The first significant change took place in 1973 when the organisation was renamed Public Transport Commission of NSW, in 1981 it was called State Rail Authority or State Rail until it ceased to exist in 2007.
The Weekly Notices commenced in 1889 and continued to be issued on a weekly basis. The set is complete up until 2020 except for a couple of issues in the 1890s and the whole of 1902. The PDFs are searchable using the Acrobat search function.
These are the bible for the working of railways and employees were held account if they broke any rule. The rule books continued until modern technical writers had their way and in many ways the books were dumbed own. This took place in the early 1990s in NSWR when the Rule Book was replaced by Safe Working Units (SWUs).
Together with the Rule Book and the Working Timetables these form in the set of essential working documents in most railways. It would appear that Chief Commissioner Eddy was responsible for the introduction for the General Appendix. It contained all the essential instructions for operating the railway including the various signals and safeworking instruments. The first issue was in about 1890 but no copy has so far been found.
They were dumbed down and replaced by the safeworking units.
These were the employee timetable that contained the times train were to run to, often loads, which lines certain locomotives were permitted to run on, running times and even the hours various locations were open. The first Working Timetable was issued about 1876 but the oldest known to survived was 1885..
WTTs were issued on a geographical basis usually at six monthly intervals, sometimes less. This pattern continued until around the early 1970s and then they became irregular. Updates or alterations were advised by Special Train Notices (STNs