Paxman Archives
and Photographic Collection

Paxman Archive Material

A substantial quantity of Paxman archive material, including correspondence, minutes and catalogues, was deposited with the Colchester Branch of Essex Record Office (ERO), on loan by the Company from time to time. Despite much local opposition, Essex County Council closed this Branch on 30th March 2007 to 'save money'. As a result the many Paxman documents held by the ERO are no longer available for study at Colchester. As reported in the Essex County Standard, work started on moving documents from Colchester to Chelmsford in early April (2007). Requests to view Paxman archive documents should now be made to the ERO at Chelmsford.
The Essex Record Office is at Wharf Road, Chelmsford, CM2 6YT.  Telephone: 01245-244644.
Email: ero.enquiry@essexcc.gov.uk.  Website: www.essexcc.gov.uk/ero

In December 2006 the Paxman Archive Trust was formed with the support of MAN Diesel Ltd, the present owner of the Paxman business. The Company has transferred to this charitable trust ownership of all the material previously deposited by Paxman with the ERO. (Other Paxman material deposited with the ERO by private individuals remains in their ownership or that of the ERO, depending on whether it was loaned or donated.) A considerable amount of additional material, particularly catalogues and photographs, resides for the present with Trustees of the Paxman Archive Trust. It is the Trustees' intention that this additional material should, in time, be deposited on loan with an archive or record office where it can be stored and made accessible to the public under controlled conditions. Ideally the Trustees would like all the Paxman archive material to be held locally in one place but the closure of the Colchester Branch of the ERO makes that aim difficult to achieve.

Order Records

The Paxman Archive Trust holds seven old Paxman (copy) order books covering the period from 24th April 1874 to 4th October 1934. For each order entry there is generally an order number, the date the order was received or entered in the book, a brief description of what was ordered, the register or works number of the item, who it was for, where it was sent, and the date it was despatched from the factory. The records are not complete in every respect but do constitute an invaluable source.

Please note that, except for very early orders, there is an important difference between the order number and the works number, the latter being the one which appeared on the maker's plate. If the order or works number of a Paxman engine or boiler, or its year of manufacture and customer's name is sent (see contact details), we can usually find the relevant entry and will be pleased to confirm details given in the order book. The records exist only in paper form and as there are literally thousands of entries we do not have the resources for doing a broader, less defined search which might span several years. The books and the orders they cover are summarised in the table below.

The books described above contain only brief summary details of orders. The original order books contained much more detailed descriptions of each order, in some cases including sketches. One of these, Boiler and Engine Order Book No 7 (not to be confused with Book 7 in the above table), has been preserved. Inside the front cover is a note by Frank Cansdale who was associated with the Order Department from 1897 to 1950. The note, dated January 1950, reads as follows:

"This Order Book No.7, follows on from Order Books numbered 1 to 6. (These earlier books are either lost or in too bad a condition for re-binding)
This Book has been preserved as a specimen of how the Orders were entered and the values at that period, July 1888-June 1890.
Order Books reached to No. 45, covering years 1890 to 1941 (50 years) but due to their bulkiness and condition into which they had deteriorated it was decided to scrap.
The last Order actually recorded in Order Books was Order No. 19816, April 1941, thereafter Record Cards were started and are now in use.
It must not be assumed that up to the year 1941, 19816 orders had been received, for many of the older orders covered a multiple of engines or boilers &c. as many as twelve engines or boilers being made to one Order Number.
Today, every product has a separate Order Number."

Full details of many orders have survived in microfilm form. To the best of our knowledge microfilm records are available for order number 2909 (c.1887) and subsequent orders placed up to the 1930s and possible the early 1940s. Viewing these records is dependent on the functioning of an aging microfilm reader but where there is a serious need for a copy of a particular order an ex-Paxman colleague is willing to investigate the possibility of supplying it.

Details of most orders for Davey Paxman's Vertical Heavy-Fuel-Oil engines and Heavy Duty Diesels are available on this site on the page Oil Engine Listing - 1920s & 1930s. The list covers nearly 500 engines and includes some of Paxman's first Vee form engines, the VRA and VRB, introduced in 1936 and 1937 respectively.

MAN Diesel Ltd holds at its Colchester offices the diesel engine order books for the period January 1938 to the present day. Access is restricted for obvious reasons and is at the sole discretion of the Company. The details of some orders, particularly more recent ones, are of course confidential. As at 2005 there were six of these books:

Order Book 1.   January 1938 to June 1947.
Order Book 2.   June 1947 to August 1951.
Order Book 3.   July 1951 to March 1961
Unnumbered   March 1961 to September 1970
Unnumbered   August 1970 to February 2002 (but excluding orders for the VP185 engine range)
Unnumbered   All orders for the VP185 engine range

It will be seen from the above that one or more order books, covering the period October 1934 to December 1937, are missing. The book(s) has presumably been lost or destroyed but there is a possibility that microfilm records of the relevant orders have survived.

A Paxman order book which we found in December 2005 contains details of boiler orders received between 1940 and 1965.

Photographic Archive

The Company's large collection of thousands of old glass plate negatives, which was destined for the tip, has been rescued. The collection is mainly of Paxman products, many being of steam engines and boilers.

Mike Gipson, a Trustee of the Paxman Archive Trust, is continuing a project he started some time ago, scanning these and other surviving photographs into JPG images which he is copying onto CDs. As at October 2008 Mike has scanned about 15,000 photographs, 60% of which are from the glass plate negatives mentioned above, and about 5,000 drawings. If you have a special need for a suitable old photograph Mike will try to help if he can. In the first instance please contact Richard Carr.

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Page updated: 11 OCT 2008