Re: [CBQ] CB&Q Archives Question

["Albert Kamm" <akamm3@sbcglobal.net>]

Richard -

Sorry for the delay in this reply but I have been on a family visit to the East Coast.  The only railroad activity I've been involved in for the past two weeks has been Thomas the Tank Engine with my grandson.

The BRHS has never received any records directly from the CB&Q, BN or BNSF.  This includes engineering drawings, AFE's or financial records.  The society dates to 1979, which is long after the formal BN merger and we did not have a direct link to the BN/BNSF.  It sounds as though you have a much better relationship with the former SP&S.

Prior to 2010, the BRHS Archives consisted of 2 file cabinets and 15 boxes of material donated by members.  I'm not aware of a formal list of materials.  We had no photos or drawings in the collection until 1997.

The BRHS archives has a large collection of financial and business records prior to 1900.  This is material de-accessioned by the Newberry Library and donated to the BRHS.  This material has been moved twice since it left the Newberry and we are still working to set it into final locations. There were 16 pallets of boxes and ledgers in this collection.

Recent focus in archives activities has been to prepare a "map", if you will, of our facility and assign location numbers to the various racks and shelves in use.  We can then begin to index material by location and type of material.  We are working with other societies on a common database for the types of records we all have in our collections.  Due to the wide variety of records we all have (timetables, photos, drawings, AFE's, etc.) it's a complicated process to find one way to document all of these holdings.

Our engineering drawings are limited to what has been donated by members or other parties.  We have a large collection of coaling station and water facility drawings we received from one member.  We have applied for grant money to purchase a flat file cabinet to store this material in.  It's currently all in one crate which makes any work on this collection difficult.  There are other smaller collections of drawings that have been received, listed and need flat file storage as well.

Charlie Vlk touched on the Q AFE's that are at the Colorado Railroad Museum.  We have two boxes of AFE's at Baraboo that came from the Newberry Library.  I've been cataloging them as a step in our database development.  About half done with approximately 10 hours spent on the process.  Most of what I cataloged so far deals with improvements to stock facilities, shop equipment and depots and buildings.  The most interesting thing I've found so far is that some of the AFE's date from 1922 and the original AFE form shows fire damage from the 1922 blaze in the Q headquarters.

We are also in possession of some ICC Valuation Summaries and Form A annual reports.  We have union records from Aurora, IL but no employee records.  We have also received photo/slide collections from 5 individuals.  All of this material still needs to be cataloged and storage locations defined.

This may be more information than you were looking for, but it touches on major points in our collections.  Let me know if you have any specific inquiries.

Regards,

Al Kamm

Email Coordinator

BRHS Archives Committee

On Thursday, July 25, 2019, 11:38:20 AM CDT, Richard Wilkens <railsnw123@comcast.net> wrote:

Hi Charlie,

Thank you very much for the great overview of what is out there. The reason I ask is that I'm the Archivist with the Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway Historical Society who has our collection at the Pacific Northwest Railroad Archive in Burien, WA. The collection we have consists of two main components, the Chief Engineer Files and Executive Department files. In the engineer files these are filed by location and by the subject and we have a vast majority of the files for the SP&S and it's subsidiaries and these range from the beginning of the railway to the early years of the BN.

It seems like we are an anomaly as most archives have the usual timetables, photographs, etc. Also the NP & GN societies have quite a bit of materials such as AFE's, drawings, etc. and since the CB&Q was a "Hill Road" I was just curious if similar materials had been saved but the two fires help to explain the lack of certain items. The SP&S suffered a similar loss in the mid 60's but what was lost isn't known.

Thanks again for your help.

Richard Wilkens

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