The records consist of the contents of a small portfolio of documents relating to the construction of the Pennsylvania Station and its associated yards and terminals belonging to Joseph T. Richards (1845-1933). The collection complements the much more extensive coverage of Pennsylvania Station and its associated tunnels in other Hagley accessions.

While the actual design and construction of the project, from the tunnel portals in New Jersey to the car storage yard (Sunnyside Yard) in Queens, was under the control of a Board of Engineers composed of outside experts reporting to Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) Vice President Samuel Rea (1855-1929), Richards chaired three committees of PRR operating officers that set the operating parameters for the design. The history of these committees, covering 1902 to 1910, is laid out in a letter to Vice President A. J. County (1871-1944) in 1910. Most of the other items from the portfolio are copies of tables, charts, and drawings that were part of these reports. The tables generally compare the statistics of the proposed Pennsylvania Station with existing PRR stations at Jersey City, Long Island City, Camden, Broad Street-Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Washington Union Station and with other large, non-PRR terminals, such as Grand Central Station, North and South Stations in Boston, Reading Terminal in Philadelphia, St. Louis Union Station and terminals in Paris and London. The statistics include things like the number of passengers and quantities of baggage handled per year, number of tracks and train occupancy, cab service, restaurant capacity, telephone calls, information booth requests, and number of toilets.

The portfolio also includes small blueprint sketch drawings of Pennsylvania Station dating from 1907, encompassing all four street elevations, transverse and longitudinal sections, and floor plans from the track to attic level. The plans show an early stage of the design with several never-completed features, such as the future East River tunnel under 31st Street and spherical chandeliers in the General Waiting Room, as well as the very rudimentary Long Island Rail Road Concourse as originally planned.

There is also a profile of the tunnels between Bergen Hill, New Jersey, through Pennsylvania Station, to the portal in Queens, an early version of the track plan for Sunnyside Yard, a map of the territory between Newark, New Jersey, and Jamaica, Queens, with the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad, included unbuilt extensions, highlighted in red, and a series of maps of railroad and steamship lines serving greater New York prepared by the New Jersey Harbor Commission in 1913.