The National Railway Heritage Awards are the only awards body dedicated to encouraging and rewarding best practice in the restoration, re-use and continued upkeep of our rich heritage of railway and tramway buildings and structures.

The Awards recognise high standards in the restoration of buildings, structures and signalling installations as well as their environmental care. We promote careful design and quality of work in repair, renewal, conversion, modernisation, adaptation and maintenance. In celebrating these projects through our annual award ceremony, and through our publicly accessible archive, we promote public recognition and awareness of our railway and tramway heritage and environment.

The Awards have been presented annually since 1979 and were initially focused on the heritage railway preservation movement. Since privatisation in the 1990’s, the Awards have broadened to encompass the infrastructure of the national rail network. Today, we receive entries from heritage railways and the operational railway, as well as public and private owners of former railway buildings, showing the incredible scope of the railway and tramway estate past and present.

The National Railway Heritage Awards became a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) in 2023. As an independent Trust our charitable status was originally confirmed by the Charity Commission in December 2006.

The Awards would not be possible without the generous support of our sponsors; more information about our current sponsors is available here.

The Annual Awards archive consists of entries, judges’ reports, photographs and where appropriate supplementary documents submitted and created as part of the awards process. We have taken care to prepare the documents and photographs in our archive for public access; if you have any comments relating to our online archive, please get in touch with us via the contact form.