The Ballast Trust was set up carry out appraisal, listing, cataloguing and provide temporary storage of large accumulations of technical records from engineering and other businesses in Scotland.

The Trust has given archive repositories access to specialist skills and knowledge in technical records which allows those collections that require (or at least benefit) from specialist knowledge to be processed. With a focus on records of industry and business this has meant that the Trust has mainly processed shipbuilding, railway and engineering records. In the past the Trust has catalogued records of Scott Lithgows, British Rail, Hunslet-Barclay among others.

At the moment staff and volunteers are working on the following collections:

• British Rail negatives
• Montague Smith collection of railway drawings and plans
• British Rail drawings
• Clyde Pilotage collection