Please Note
It is with great sadness to advise you that Peter passed away in February 2019 at the age of 87. So no further updates to the database will be made. Peter’s website is maintained by his son Martin. Feel free to contact Martin [martin@bloomfieldigital.co.uk] for any advice and support. Although his knowledge is not so extensive as Peter’s, Martin travelled frequently to The National Archive in Kew and assisted in the research.
[Photo: Peter Bloomfield]
Peter’s Interest in the NLR Servants
Peter spent the first eight years of his life just a short way from Highbury station. In those days maroon coloured electric trains ran from Broad Street to Watford and to Kew Bridge and Richmond. His maternal grandparents lived just along from Stonebridge Park station on the Watford line and paternal grandparents lived in Hampstead on the Hampstead Junction Railway on the way to Kew Bridge and Richmond, via the North and South West Junction Railway. It is was on one of these journeys that he caught a chronic bug and which, quite a few decades later, he had not been able to shrug off – a love/an obsession of all things North London Railway.
Working Life
Virtually the whole of his working life was serving in the Army. He was eventually put out to grass by his regiment (RTR) and posted to Colchester. It was from here that he started going to the Public Records Office-cum-The National Archives and over the years spent a lot of time /too much time delving into matters North London Railway. He gradually started concentrating on the staff, especially the lower echelons. When it comes to Army history, plenty has been written about generals and the odd outstanding soldier but nothing about average junior officers and soldiers without whom the Army would not function: the same goes for railwaymen. Peter has attempted in a very small way to rectify this omission in respect of the North London Railway. This could not have been done without the help of two girl relations, Margaret and Amanda, Jim Connor for use of his photographs, fellow members of the North London Railway Historical Society, and the staff of The National Archives, all of whom have been very, very, patient to Peter. He have also received tremendous help from relatives of the railwaymen parting with information and photographs of their forebears. Throughout he had the whole-hearted support of my wife, Luise, his daughter and son, Linda and Martin and their children, especially the eldest of each, Richard and Oliver.
Research
Peter had collected over 8,870 names of NLR railwaymen with varying amounts of information about them. The least being a name on the NLR War Memorial to a comprehensive story. This site contains the information Peter have gleaned. One thing he have discovered over the years in connection with the general history of the NLR is that if a source is not cited be wary! Hopefully, all that Peer has included here has the source quoted.
The majority of details concerning railway careers has come from the staff registers and minutes of meetings of the NLR now held by The National Archives.
Further information from family historians, or anyone else for that matter, is always welcome via Email.