Finding Aids

James Henry Yeager (1911-1986) was the industrial photographer for the Bethlehem Steel Corporation for thirty years, between 1946 and 1976. The first half of this collection contains photographs taken by James H. Yeager during his tenure at Bethlehem Steel as industrial photographer. The second half the this collection consists of photos and slides taken by Yeager while traveling in Pennsylvania, New York, and New England, and to a lesser degree Washington, DC and the southern United States.

This collection consists of glass plate negatives showing scenes from Carbon County, Pennsylvania during the second half of the nineteenth century, as well as a selection of archival prints. The majority of the images show scenes from Mauch Chunk (now Jim Thorpe) and the surrounding area, the Mauch Chunk Switchback Railway, and the waterfalls at Glen Onoko.

Jervis Langdon, Jr. (1905-2004) was a railroad executive largely known for rehabilitating ailing railroads and for his influence in the reshaping of national railroad policy in the 1970s. Langdon's papers document the U.S. railroad industry's efforts to obtain a competitive rate rule through Congress in relation to other freight carriers, such as trucks and barges. Also included is material covering Langdon's efforts in revitalizing bankrupt railroads, such as the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific, and the Penn Central reorganization and its subsequent 1980 valuation case.

Jill Jonnes (1952-) is a freelance writer who has published a number of books on technology and society, including Conquering Gotham in 2007, which is an account of the design and construction of the Pennsylvania Railroad's New York improvements. The collection is comprised of Jonnes' research notes for writing the book, almost entirely of photocopies of letters, reports, newspaper articles, and extracts from books.

John Foster Tucker III (1950-2008) was a Philadelphia-born rail transit operating official and rail history enthusiast. This collection consists of photographs of trolleys, trains, rails lines, and rail stations in Philadelphia and the city's Pennsylvania suburbs, as well as offices, maintenance shops, and garages used by transit authorities. Most of the collection is devoted to SEPTA, but predecessor companies PTC (Philadelphia Transportation Company) and PSTC (Philadelphia Suburban Transportation Company) are also represented.

The John F. Tucker Transit History Collection consists of official documents produced or used by Mr. Tucker during his career as a public transit official, records of the pre-SEPTA Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company (1907-1939) and the Philadelphia Transportation Company (1940-1968) that he preserved from loss or destruction, and materials collected out of his interest in the history of transit systems, particularly electric traction lines. The collection traces the evolution of the Philadelphia transit system, its extent, routes and services, and of North American rail rapid transit generally.

Jonathan H. Klein (1949-) spent his professional career as a specialist in passenger railroad and rail transit equipment economics. The papers consist of a small sample of reports and memoranda written or collected by Klein in his role as a manager in charge of rail passenger equipment procurement, performance and maintenance. The agencies represented are SEPTA, Chicago Transit Authority, BART, LAMTA and Amtrak.

Joseph T. Richards (1845-1933) was a career civil engineer with the Pennsylvania Railroad Company who participated in several of their large construction projects in the first decade of the twentieth century. The records consist of the contents of a small portfolio of documents relating to the construction of Pennsylvania Station and its associated yards and terminals.

Kenneth A. Browne (1905-1985) was the research director attached to the president of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway system. This collection consists of his files and documents the history of the development of Train "X" from its beginnings in 1945 to the point at which the New York Central's "Xplorer" was introduced in 1956.

Karl Gabosch (1932-2008) was an employee of Pennsylvania Railroad Company and its successors, Penn Central and Conrail. The collection consists of a sample of company manuals, internal publications, and maps that were issued to him over the course of his career.

The Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company was a major anthracite mining and transporting firm in eastern Pennsylvania between 1822 and 1954. This collection consists of one outbound letterpress copybook dating from 1844 to 1848 of Edwin A. Douglas (1805-1859), Chief Engineer & Superintendent; three outbound letterbooks of William Reed, Chief Clerk at Mauch Chunk, dating from 1852 to 1859; thirteen outbound letterbooks of George Ruddle (1828-1904), Chief Clerk, Treasurer, and Real Estate Agent, dating from 1860 to 1878; and four inbound letterbooks of George Ruddle dating from 1870 to 1874. The letterbooks contain the correspondence of some of the chief field officers at Mauch Chunk, much of it regular exchanges with the officers at the Philadelphia headquarters.

The Lehigh Valley Railroad Company was one of the major anthracite railroads and formed a secondary trunk line between Jersey City, New Jersey and Buffalo, New York. Their records consist of minute books, corporate histories, voluntary reorganization plans, and an illustrated brochure on Claremont Terminal.

The Lehigh Valley Railroad was a railroad company in the northeastern United States primarily used to haul anthracite coal from Mauch Chunk (now Jim Thorpe), Pennsylvania, to Easton, Pennsylvania. This collection consists of twenty-two glass negatives and one box. Most photographs depict the rolling stock of Lehigh Valley Railroad dating to approximately some point between 1934 and 1948, based on engine numbers.

The Link-Belt Company was founded by William Dana Ewart (1851-1908), who had invented the detachable link-belt in 1874. The flexible metal belt provided a superior system of power transmission and was first used widely in farm machinery. This item is a booklet of cyanotype photographs of locomotive coaling stations designed, erected, and equipped by the Link-Belt Engineering Company.

This collection consists of glass plate negatives and photographic copy prints which were made directly from the negatives. The images document an array of subjects, though the majority of the images are of locomotives, railroad cars, railroad stations, and other railroad infrastructure. Various landscape and cityscape photographs are also included. Where it is possible to identify the locations, the majority of images document sites in Pennsylvania, though photographs of sites in New York state and Ontario are also present.

Louis T. Klauder and Associates (LTK) is a professional rail transportation engineering consulting firm. LTK were hired to work as consulting engineers for a joint project of the United States Department of Transportation and Pennsylvania Railroad called the Northeast Corridor Demonstration Project. This collection contains aerial photographs of the Northeast Corridor railroad route from New York to Boston taken between 1951 and 1965. These images were used to aid in the project. These aerial photographs make up a bulk of the collection. There are several sets of images that show train station exteriors along several routes on the Northeast Corridor. Thirty-eight photographs show the projects test track at Pueblo Army Depot in Colorado. There are four press photographs for Inflight Motion Pictures Inc. and a few renderings of proposed trains.

Founded in 1921, the Philadelphia firm of Louis T. Klauder and Associates specializes in the design and evaluation of railroad and rail transit systems, including equipment, infrastructure and operations. Their collection consists of selected job files covering Klauder's work for the Federal Office of High Speed Ground Transportation in developing the first U.S. high-speed rail project in the Boston-Washington Northeast Corridor during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The collection also includes smaller job files on tangential rail projects and a series of files Robert B. Watson, former Northeast Corridor project coordinator for the Pennsylvania and Penn Central Railroads, brought with him when he joined Klauder in 1972.

The Manitou and Pikes Peak Railway, which takes passengers to the summit of Pikes Peak mountain in Colorado, is the highest rack railway in the world and the highest railway in North America. This collection consists of a viewbook consisting of eight pages with photographs of the railway.

The Chisholm Bros. was a publishing company that produced railway, travel and tourists guides, and souvier albums which depicted routes of travel. This item is a hard cover souvenir with eighteen views of sights in Mauch Chunk, the "Switzerland of America." Images are on 12 unpaginated folded panels.

Mendes Cohen (1831-1915) worked for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company, chiefly in the Motive Power Department, from 1851 to 1855, where he adaptated wood-burning locomotives to coal-burning and devised the method for handling traffic on the 10% temporary grade over the Kingwood Tunnel. The report covers a series of tests and improvements conducted in 1853 and 1854 with the aim of reducing flue wear and tear and fuel consumption in the large coal-burning engines

Lobdell Car Wheel Company was a producer of cast railroad car wheels in Wilmington, Delaware. This collection contains one photographic reproduction depicting employee Michael Munroe (1879-1969) pouring steel.

Historically, a stock certificate is a paper record of ownership in a company. Certain information is included on a stock certificate: number of share, identification number, a corporate seal, and signatures. This collection consists of predominantly unissued stock certificates for American railroad companies. There are also four certificates of tax free municipal bonds of the City of Philadelphia.

The Mount Carbon Railroad Company was incorporated in Pennsylvania on April 20, 1829, for the purpose of building a railroad from the Schuylkill Canal at Mount Carbon up Norwegian Creek to the forks and thence to Wadesville on the East Branch and Mount Laffee on the West Branch. The collection consist of thirteen laborers receipts issued for the construction of the railroad in 1829 and 1830 by William R. Hopkins, superintendent.

The Philadelphia, Easton and Water-Gap Railroad Company was incorporated in Pennsylvania on April 6, 1852, and renamed the North Pennsylvania Railroad Company on October 3, 1853. The collection consists of nineteenth and twentieth century portraits of officers and presidents.

North Pennsylvania Railroad was a railroad company which served the Pennsylvania counties of Philadelphia, Montgomery, Bucks, and Northampton. It was incorporated as the Philadelphia, Easton and Water-Gap Railroad Company on April 6, 1852, and renamed the North Pennsylvania Railroad Company on October 3, 1853. Their records consist of corporate records such as minute books, annual reports, account books and statements.

The Northern Liberties & Penn Township Railroad Company was incorporated in Pennsylvania on April 23, 1829, to build a railroad from Front Street at the Delaware River through what was then the independent District of Northern Liberties and Penn Township (now both part of the City of Philadelphia) to connect with the state-owned Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad near Broad and Vine Streets. This volume is the basic surviving record of the company's monetary transactions during its period of construction and independent operations.

The Pennsylvania New York Central Transportation Company was the creation of a 1968 merger of the Pennsylvania and New York Central railroads. In 1970, the "Penn Central" Transportation Company filed for bankruptcy and auctioned off Pennsylvania Railroad and New York Central Railroad memorabilia, pictures, and other materials. This collection consists of a poster for the auction of Penn Central railroad memorabilia. The poster includes images of lanterns and a locomotive, both in black, on brown paper with text announcing dates for auction and preview.

A complete set of employee timetables for each region and division of the Penn Central Railroad.

Penn Virginia Corporation was an oil and gas company, incorporated as the Virginia Coal & Iron Company on January 6, 1882. It was one of many firms established by a group of interrelated entrepreneurs headed by John Leisenring (1819-1884), a Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, civil and mining engineer. The name changed to Penn Virigina Corporation in 1967. The records of Penn Virginia Corporation cover the development and operations of the Virginia Coal & Iron Company, a large southern Appalachian land company, with some information on its immediate neighbors and local support facilities.

From 1925 to 1958, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company issued a series of advertising calendars, each measuring over two feet square. Of the thirty-three calendars published, twenty-eight were illustrated by Grif Teller (1899-1993). This small collection consists of six posters featuring the paintings from the 1949, 1950, 1951, 1953, 1954, and 1955 Pennsylvania Railroad advertising calendars. The title of the painting and the words "Pennsylvania Railroad" appear in the border beneath each image.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and traffic from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until the decline of the northeast's and midwest's dominance of manufacturing. These records provide nearly comprehensive coverage of corporate matters for the entire time span and reasonably complete coverage of the functional departments from 1920 to 1950, with less coverage from 1893 to 1920 and from 1950 to 1968.

The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) was chartered in 1846 to complete an all-railroad network across the state. Between 1855 and 1874, the PRR underwent rapid expansion and emerged as one of the two largest railroad systems in the region east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio. In 1910, the PRR entered Manhattan through tunnels under the Hudson and East Rivers. This collection consists of flyers and a brochure for Pennsylvania Railroad special fares or trains.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and traffic in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. This small collection of photographs covers the planning, surveying, and building of the Pennsylvania Railroad tunnels under the Hudson River, connecting New Jersey and New York in the early twentieth century.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and traffic from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until the decline of the northeast's and midwest's dominance of manufacturing. This collection of photographs primarily depict the PRR itself, but numerous views of similar facilities and equipment on other railroads, of nearby buildings and properties, or of standardized equipment and accessories that were collected for reference are included. Almost all of the photographs are the work of commercial photographers hired on short term contract, but some are prints from the company's own negatives. The collection have been arranged by subject and organized into three series: Equipment, trains, and personnel; Structures and right of way; and Company magazine photographs.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and traffic from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until the decline of the northeast's and midwest's dominance of manufacturing. This is a collection of thirty-six blank, preprinted forms dating between 1960 and 1967, mostly related to the inspection and movement of freight cars.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and traffic from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until the decline of the northeast's and midwest's dominance of manufacturing. This collection consists of materials related to the Pennsylvania Railroad bridge and trestle near Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. There is a copy of an erection diagram from 1896 and a copy of the application for the bridge to be a historic site to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and tratffic from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until the decline of the northeast's and midwest's dominance of manufacturing. This small collection consists of six schematic diagrams of racks and signals placed in service or removed from service, mostly in connection with the step-by-step construction of the Philadelphia Improvements of 1927 to 1952.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and traffic from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until the decline of the northeast's and midwest's dominance of manufacturing. This collection consists of one report from 1959 by General Electric Company, Locomotive & Car Equipment Department consisting of an electric motive power study.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and traffic from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until the decline of the northeast's and midwest's dominance of manufacturing. This collection consists of two items. One is a copy of a report from 1959 by General Electric Company, Locomotive & Car Equipment Department containing an electric motive power study. The second item is a menu with a cover design by industrial designer Raymond Loewy (1893-1986).

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and traffic from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until the decline of the northeast's and midwest's dominance of manufacturing. This item is an unpublished report titled, "Analysis of Proposed Use of Prefabricated Food on Dining Cars," written by the Pennsylvania Railroad, Dining Car Department, Research Committee in 1945. The report includes sample menus, data on preparation, and findings from experiments conducted by the committee.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and traffic from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until the decline of the northeast's and midwest's dominance of manufacturing. This item is a scrapbook kept by a railroad station agent(s) somewhere near or south of Philadelphia between 1887 and 1888. The purpose of the volume was to enable the agent to make out waybills for freight by containing updated information as to the rates to be charged on various specific goods, the division of rates with other companies for interline movements, and any embargoes or restrictions on routings. The volume offers a snapshot of the types of traffic, mostly iron and steel, livestock and agricultural products, most common to this territory and of the various through routings common at this time.

Timetables issued periodically to the public, generally at ticket offices, showing the schedules of passenger trains on various routes.

Founded in 1846 with headquarters in Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company (PRR) was an American Class-1 Railroad that pervaded early American culture. As a chief source of employment and transportation, the PRR served as a national symbol of America's progress as a leading industrial nation. This item is a poster featuring an E6s Atlantic class locomotive on the turntable at the Pennsylvania Railroad's 46th Street Enginehouse in West Philadelphia. The poster was created to celebrate 150th anniversary of the Pennsylvania Railroad's charter.

The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) was chartered in 1846 to complete an all-railroad network across the state. Between 1855 and 1874, the PRR underwent rapid expansion and emerged as one of the two largest railroad systems in the region east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio. In 1910, the PRR entered Manhattan through tunnels under the Hudson and East Rivers. This is a viewbook or souvenir album containing views related to the Pennsylvania Railroad in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, including stations, bridges, and tracks.

This is a small collection of three postcards. Two postcards have images of Pennsylvania Railroad stations in Greensburg and Swissvale, Pennsylvania. The third postcard is an advertisement for Pennsylvania Cement Co. showing the Whitney (N.C.) Dam. The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) was chartered in 1846 to completing an all-rail road across the state. In 1857 the Pennsylvania Railroad purchased the old Main Line system and eventually brought the entire line from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh under one management.

The Joseph D. Lovell Locomotive Rosters constitute a partial roster of Pennsylvania Railroad steam, electric and early diesel locomotives to 1946. The collection also contains seven small ledgers listing the production of not only the Juniata Shops, but also the earlier Altoona Machine Shops (1866-1904) and locomotives purchased from outside builders, principally the Baldwin Locomotive Works. His lists include rosters for both the Pennsylvania Railroad proper and its predecessor lines.

There is also a folder containing copies of letters and notes by Robert B. Watson documenting the provenance of the records.

The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) was chartered in 1846 to completing an all-rail road across the state. Between 1855 and 1874, the PRR underwent rapid expansion and emerged as one of the two largest railroad systems in the area east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio. This collection consists of two interviews conducted in 1998 in West Chester, Pennsylvania with five women who worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company (succeeded by the Reading Company) began construction in 1833 and the mainline from Philadelphia to Pottsville opened in 1842. This is a small collection of copperplate engravings and some medallions. They are presumably some sort of seat check for destinations along the mainline. The collection also contains three medallions, two related to the Jamestown Centennial Exposition in 1907 and one from Baldwins Standard dried beef.

The collection consists of digital scans of photographs of bridges on the Philadelphia Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which ran from Philadelphia to Harrisburg.

The Philadelphia Suburban Transportation Company operated bus and trolley lines, many of which originated in Upper Darby Township on the western border of Philadelphia and served Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery counties. Suburban Station and the Fidelity-Philadelphia Trust Company building are both located in Center City. The Red Arrow transportation lines are found in Philadelphia's western suburbs. This small collection consists of photographs of Suburban Station, railroad and trolley tracks, and bus shelters.