Railroad History Archive

Links to Railroad History Resources in the United States

Genealogy

U.S. Railroad Retirement Board and Genealogical Information after 1936: http://www.rrb.gov/mep/genealogy.asp

U.S. Federal institutions

National Archives and Records Administration. Riding the Rails Up Paper Mountain: Researching Railroad Records in the National Archives: http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1997/spring/railroad-records-1.html
National Archives and Records Administration. Records Relating to North American Railroads, Reference Paper 91 (this publication is accessible through the Railway and Locomotive Historical Society website): http://rlhs.org/research.htm
Railroad Maps at the Library of Congress, a selection from the Geography and Map Division holdings, based on the popular cartobibiliography, Railroad Maps of the United States: A Selective Annotated Bibliography of Original 19th-century Maps in the Geography and Map Divison of the Library of Congress, compiled by Andrew M. Modelski (Washington: Library of Congress, 1975). This annotated list reveals the scope of the railroad map collection and highlights the development of railroad mapping, in 19th century America. Described are 623 maps which show "internal improvements" of the past century: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/rrhtml/rrhome.html
Civil War Maps at the Library of Congress; includes many maps of the Union and Confederate railroad systems: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/civil_war_maps/
Exhibit of the National Museum of American History, "America On the Move, American Railroads in the 20th Century": http://americanhistory.si.edu/onthemove/themes/story_42_1.html
National Transportation Library, administered by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics in cooperation with the Transportation Administrative Services Center (TASC), the operating administration, and the Office of the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation: http://ntl.bts.gov/
National Transportation Safety Board Railroad Accident Reports (1967-present): http://www.ntsb.gov/Publictn/R_Acc.htm. There is also a very handy index, done privately, to these reports available at http://www.railaccrep.com
Department of Transportation, Interstate Commerce Commission Historical Railroad Reports, 1911-1993: http://dotlibrary.specialcollection.net
Federal Railroad Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation: http://www.fra.dot.gov/

U.S. Northeast -- New England

Railroading in the Northeast: http://www.northeast.railfan.net/ne_trainlinks.html
New England Rail Photography Archive: http://photos.nerail.org/
Railroad Museum of New England: http://www.rmne.org
New Hampshire Historical Society (Concord, New Hampshire), which holds the papers of Charles S. Mellen, president of the New Haven Railroad from 1903 to 1913: http://www.nhhistory.org/index.html
Remembering the Rutland Railroad: http://users.rcn.com/jimdu4/ and the Rutland Railway Association: http://www.rutlandrailway.org/
Guide to the Rutland Railroad Archives at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont: http://midddigital.middlebury.edu/rutland_railroad/RRAGuide.htm
Vermont Historical Society Library (Montpelier, Vermont), which holds collections with information about the Vermont Central Railroad: http://vermonthistory.org
Boston & Maine Railroad Historical Society: http://www.trainweb.org/bmrrhs/
Harvard Business School (Boston, Massachusetts), Baker Library, Historical Collections: http://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/ -- also from the site, an online exhibit titled Railroads and the Transformation of Capitalism , at http://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/railroads/
University of Massachusetts -- Lowell, Center for Lowell History, which includes the records of the Boston & Maine Railroad Historical Society: http://library.uml.edu/clh/BMArch.Html
Walker Transportation Collection at the Beverly [Massachusetts] Historical Society and Museum: http://www.walkertrans.org/
Amherst [Massachusetts] Railway Society: http://www.amherstrail.org/
State Transportation Library of Massachusetts (Boston, Massachusetts): http://www.eot.state.ma.us/transportationlibrary/
Old Colony & Newport Scenic Railway (Newport, Rhode Island): http://www.ocnrr.com/
Connecticut History Online, with many photographs of Connecticut railroad stations: http://www.cthistoryonline.org/
Connecticut Eastern Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society and the Connecticut Eastern Railroad Museum: http://cteastrrmuseum.org/
Vernon, Connecticut, Depot and Vernon railroad history: http://www.vernondepot.com/
TylerCityStation, covering railroad history in southwestern Connecticut, especially the New Haven and Derby Railroad; also has all-time roster of Connecticut passenger stations with linked photos. : http://www.tylercitystation.info/index.html
Western Connecticut Chapter, National Railway Historical Society: http://www.westctnrhs.org/, with information about the SONO Switch Tower in Norwalk, Connecticut: http://www.westctnrhs.org/tower.htm
Connecticut Trolley Museum (East Windsor, Connecticut): http://www.ct-trolley.org/
Danbury [Connecticut] Railway Museum: http://www.danbury.org/drm/
The Unofficial Housatonic Railroad Page: http://homepage.mac.com/housatonic/
The New Canaan Railroad: A Connecticut Branch Line: http://www.imediaet.com/ncrr/index.htm
New Haven Railroad Historical & Technical Association, a group dedicated to the preservation of the history of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad: http://www.nhrhta.org/
"The Devastation and Restoration of New England's Vital Life Line -- the New Haven R.R.," a book published by the New Haven Railroad to commemorate the effects of the Hurricane of 1938 on the railroad: http://members.cox.net/d_laroche/hurricane/hurricane.htm
Mystic Valley Railway Society: http://mysticvalleyrs.org/
Connecticut River Museum (Essex, Connecticut): http://www.ctrivermuseum.org/
Essex Steam Train (Essex, Connecticut): http://www.essexsteamtrain.com/
Shore Line Trolley Museum (East Haven, Connecticut): http://www.bera.org/

U.S. Northeast -- Mid-Atlantic

Conrail Historical Society: http://www.thecrhs.org/
Conrail Cyclopedia: http://crcyc.railfan.net/
Syracuse University Library, Special Collections Research Center (Syracuse, New York), which holds archival materials about the Erie Railroad, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, the New York Central Railroad, and the Boston and Maine Railroad: http://library.syr.edu/information/spcollections/index.html
Syracuse University Library Digital Projects, Erie Railroad Glass Plate Negative Collection: http://library.syr.edu/information/spcollections/digital/erierr/
Cornell University Library, Division of Rare Books and Manuscripts (Ithaca, New York), which includes the Cooper Bridge Collection of drawings of Theordore Cooper (1839-1919), editor of Transactions of the American Society of Engineers; finding aid available at: http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/EAD/htmldocs/RMM04709.html
New York, Westchester & Boston Railway Company: http://www.nywbry.com/ with a website dedicated to the Highbrook Avenue Bridge in North Pelham, New York: http://www.highbrookhighline.com/about-us/highbrook-bridge-significance
Western New York Railroad Archive: http://wnyrails.org/
New Jersey State Archives (Trenton, New Jersey): http://www.njarchives.org/, with a listing of the railroad collections they hold at: http://www.njarchives.org/links/webcat/queries/prailroa.html
Ulster and Delaware Railroad Historical Society: http://www.udrrhs.org/
Temple University Libraries, Urban Archives (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), which holds the records of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company: http://library.temple.edu/collections/urbana/index
The Library Company of Philadelphia, which holds a collection of photographs of scenes of the Pennsylvania Railroad, taken by William Rau: http://www.librarycompany.org/
Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania (Strasburg, Pennsylvania), with materials (including over 300,000 photographic images) associated with the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie, the Maryland & Pennsylvania, the Reading Company, and the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad: http://www.rrmuseumpa.org/
Pennsylvania State Archives (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania): http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/bah/DAM/overview.htm
Historic Pittsburgh [Pennsylvania] Image Collections: http://images.library.pitt.edu/cgi-bin/i/image/image-idx?xc=1;page=index;g=imls
Frank B. Fairbanks Rail Transportation Archive of the University of Pittsburgh Digital Library: http://images.library.pitt.edu/cgi-bin/i/image/image-idx?c=fairbanks&g=imls&page=index
Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum (Baltimore, Maryland): http://www.borail.org/
Hagley Museum and Library (Wilmington, Delaware), which houses an extensive collection that documents the history of American business and technology, including the Pennsylvania Railroad: http://www.hagley.lib.de.us/

U.S. South

Chesapeake & Ohio Historical Society (Clifton Forge, Virginia): http://www.cohs.org/
The Virginia Tech Imagebase (Blacksburg, Virginia), which holds images of the Norfolk & Western Railway and the Southern Railway: http://imagebase.lib.vt.edu/
Virginia Museum of Transportation (Roanoke, Virginia): http://www.vmt.org/
O. Winston Link Museum (Roanoke, Virginia): http://www.linkmuseum.org/
Kentucky Railway Museum (New Haven, Kentucky): http://www.kyrail.org/
University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Special Collections Library: http://www.lib.utk.edu/spcoll/
Johnson's Depot (Johnson City, Tennessee), with information about the city's railroad history: http://www.johnsonsdepot.com/
Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway Preservation Society: http://www.ncstl.com/
A Pictorial Tour of the Sequatchie Valley Railroad, by the South Pittsburg [Tennessee] Historic Preservation Society: http://www.historicsouthpittsburgtn.org/SequatchieValleyRailroad.html
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which holds business and railroad history resources in the Southern Historical Collection : http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/shc/index.html
North Carolina business history, with a page on the state's railroads: http://www.historync.org/railroads.htm
Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History (Kennesaw, Georgia): http://www.southernmuseum.org/
Florida Railroad Museum (Parrish, Florida): http://www.fgcrrm.org/

U.S. Midwest

Cleveland State University Library, Railroad History Holdings (Cleveland, Ohio): http://www.clevelandmemory.com/rr/
Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection at the Indiana University Digital Library Program (Bloomington, Indiana): http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/cushman/index.jsp
Newberry Library (Chicago, Illinois), which holds collections of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company, the Illinois Central Railroad Company, and the Pullman Company: http://www.newberry.org/collections/railroad.html
A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum (Chicago, Illinois): http://www.aphiliprandolphmuseum.com/
Illinois Railway Museum: http://www.irm.org/
Michigan Railroad History Museum and Archives (Durand, Michigan): http://durandstation.org/
University of Michigan Library Transportation History Collection (Ann Arbor, Michigan): http://quod.lib.umich.edu/r/railroad/
National Railroad Museum (Green Bay, Wisconsin): http://www.nationalrrmuseum.org/
University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, Railroad History Collections: http://www.uwm.edu/Library/arch/rail.htm
Center for Railroad Photography and Art (Madison, Wisconsin): http://www.railphoto-art.org/
Minnesota Historical Society (St. Paul, Minnesota), which holds the records of the Great Northern Railroad: http://www.mnhs.org/
Iowa Digital Library of the University of Iowa (Iowa City, Iowa), John P. Vander Maas Railroadiana Collection: http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/cdm4/index_railroadiana.php?CISOROOT=/railroadiana
John W. Barriger III National Museum of Transportation (St. Louis, Missouri): http://www.umsl.edu/barriger/index.html
Railroad Library at the University of Missouri - St. Louis: http://www.umsl.edu/barriger/
Durham Western Heritage Museum (Omaha, Nebraska): http://www.dwhm.org/
Railroads and the Making of Modern America (University of Nebraska-Lincoln): http://railroads.unl.edu/

U. S. West

"Hazardous Business: Industry, Regulation and the Texas Railroad Commission," an online exhibit by the Texas State Library & Archives Commission: http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/exhibits/railroad/
Museum of the American Railroad (Dallas, Texas): http://www.dallasrailwaymuseum.com/
DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University (Dallas, Texas), with information about railroad history: http://www.smu.edu/cul/degolyer/
Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum (Temple, Texas): http://www.rrhm.org/
Digital Image Collection of the Denver Public Library (Denver, Colorado): http://history.denverlibrary.org/images/index.html
California State Railroad Museum (Sacramento, California): http://www.csrmf.org/
"A Working List of Books and Booklets on the Southern Pacific and Related Subsidiaries," compiled by Peter J. McClosky, with information about archival collections: http://www.sphts.org/Resources/spbooks.html
Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum: http://CPRR.org/
Union Pacific Railroad History: http://www.uprr.com/aboutup/history/

General railroad or historical information

National Railway Historical Society: http://www.nrhs.com
Railway & Locomotive Historical Society: http://rlhs.org/, with a link to an index of their publication, "Railroad History," at http://www.rlhs.org/ridxtit.htm. Numbers 1-9 are generally hard to find, but a table of contents to them is available at this R&LHS site -- http://www.rlhs.org/rrhout12.htm -- and number 1 is available through Google Books (http://books.google.com/)
Railroad Station Historical Society: http://www.rrshs.org/
National Model Railroad Association: http://www.nmra.org/
National Association of Timetable Collectors: http://www.naotc.org/
The Museum of Railway Timetables (focusing exclusively on Amtrak timetables): http://www.timetables.org/
"North American Railroad History in a Nutshell," available through railroadheritage.org, as a service of the Center for Railroad Photography & Art. The Nutshell distills railroad history down to 32 photographs that cover everything from the beginnings of railroading in the U.S. to the odern preservation movement. Click on "Nutshell" in the top bar.
Connecticut's Heritage Gateway, a program of the Connecticut Humanities Council: http://www.ctheritage.org/
Connecticut Antique Machinery Association (Kent, Connecticut): http://www.ctamachinery.com/
Rails-to-Trails Conservancy: http://www.railtrails.org/index.html
Southern New England Chapter of the Society for Industrial Archaeology: http://www.snecsia.org/
American-Rails.com, which shares and teaches the history and current operations of the American railroad industry: http://www.american-rails.com/
George Elwood Online Collection: http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/nh/nh.html
Shore Line East -- commuter rail service between New Haven and New London, Connecticut: http://www.shorelineeast.com
Conrail: http://www.conrail.com
Amtrak: http://www.amtrak.com
Amtrak Passenger Car Photo index: http://www.trainweb.org/passengercars/Indices/A4.htm
MTA Metro-North Commuter Railroad: http://mta.info/mnr/index.html
New York City Subway Resources: http://www.nycsubway.org
Station by station tour of the Metro-North New Haven Line: http://world.nycsubway.org/us/metronorth/newhaven.html
"History of the Railways of Massachusetts," by Edward Appleton, written in 1871: http://www.catskillarchive.com/rrextra/abnere1.Html
"A Brief History of Lines West of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad," by Phillip Blakeslee: http://www.catskillarchive.com/rrextra/abnere2.html
Association of American Railroads: http://www.aar.org/
Trains Magazine Online: http://www.trains.com/trn/
National Model Railroad Association, Kalmbach Memorial Library (Chattanooga, Tennessee): http://www.nmra.org/library/
National Model Railroad Association's Directory of World Wide Model Railroading Websites: http://www.cwrr.com/nmra/
Peters Railroad Museum (Wallingford, Connecticut): http://pages.cthome.net/petersrrmuseum/
RailroadData.com: http://www.railroaddata.com/
RailServe.com: http://www.railserve.com/ and SteamPhotos.com: http://www.steamphotos.com
Railroadiana Online (for railroad artifact collectors): http://railroadiana.org/
A History of the First Locomotives in America, written in 1871 by William Brown: http://www.history.rochester.edu/steam/brown/
Railroad Road Names and Abbreviations (Road Marks), compiled by H&R Trains: http://www.hrtrains.com/rdname.html
Center for Railroad Photography and Art: http://www.railphoto-art.org/ and railroadheritage.org
Scripophily (collectible railroad stocks and bond certificates): http://scripophily.net/
Railroad Cartoons, a website showing American political and social cartoons depicting the railroads from the 1840s down to about 1930, with the bulk before American entry into World War I in 1917, and includes many depicting the New Haven Railroad. Compiled by Smith College Emeritus Professor Mark Aldrich: http://sophia.smith.edu/~maldrich/
Railroad Parts: History for Kids: http://www.partsgeek.com/brands/railroad_parts_history_for_kids.html
TrainNet.org (for international railroad links): http://www.tadlane.com/rrlinks.htm
www.rrhistorical.com: http://www.rrhistorical.com/
Connecticut Roads: http://www.kurumi.com/roads/ct/
Topozone.com, an interactive website of topographic maps of the United States: http://www.topozone.com/
Historic USGS Maps of New England, provide by the Dimond Library of the University of New Hampshire: http://docs.unh.edu/nhtopos/nhtopos.htm
A listing of Digital Collections of Historical Maps: http://classguides.lib.uconn.edu/digital_collections_of_historical_maps

This page is maintained by L. Smith.