Help < Back to search

The British Railway Journal Index has been designed for ease of use and simplicity in finding what you want. However, if you need some pointers, here are a few to help you get started. If you have any questions that are not covered here please get in touch .

The search engine works in a similar way to internet search engines like Google, so if you are familiar with these you should have little problem using the search on this site.

1. Search box

Enter what you want to search for here.
This can be a single word (e.g. locomotives), a group of words (e.g. steam locomotives LMS) or a phrase (e.g. LNER engine sheds and depots).
The more words you enter the more specific your results will be.

2. Fields dropdown

This allows you to choose which fields to search:

  • All fields (default) - searches everything (titles, descriptions, authors, tags and additional notes).
    Most of the time you should only need to use this option.
  • Titles & descriptions - searches just the titles and descriptions of each article.
    Choose this option if you know all or part of the title of an article, or words used in the title and/or description.
  • Authors - searches the author names for each article
    Choose this option if you want to see a list of all the articles by a particular author.
    You can enter the author's full name or just the forename or surname.
  • Tags - just searches the tags for each article.
    Choose this option if you want to find all articles on a particular topic.

3. Browse authors/issues/specials/tags

Use these links to see a list of all authors, issues, specials or tags.
For example, if you want to see what's in a specific issue or special, click on either 'Issues' or 'Specials' and then select the relevant issue/special number from the list.