The Transportation Act of 1920 required railroads to file with the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) for permission to eliminate tracks from their system. The collections consists of index cards to finance dockets involving the Pennsylvania Railroad, Penn Central Transportation Company, and Conrail.

Chartered in 1869, the Wilmington & Western Rail Road Company formed to create a rail line connecting Wilmington, Delaware, with Landenberg, Pennsylvania. A non-profit organization, Historic Red Clay Valley, Inc. (HRCV)., formed in 1960 and today operates the line as a heritage railroad. The collection includes eight maps of the line created by the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1918 and two publications concerning the history of both the Wilmington & Western Railroad line and HRCV.