 A PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD
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RECURRING QUESTIONS
The information on this Web site is provided, pursuant to the licensing agreement, for the
use of general public. However, I do not and cannot provide PRR historical information on an
ad hoc basis, just for the asking. Incredibly, I have actually received requests
such as "tell me about the history of the PRR"... Although it may not appear so at times, I
actually do have "real" work to do, and I can scarcely make a living from a free Web site.
The potential PRR historian would do well to avail himself of a copy of Burgess and Kennedy's
Centennial History of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company 1846-1946. These are available in
many larger libraries across the U.S. and Canada, many college and university libraries, and in
many smaller libraries in towns served by the PRR. There is the option of interlibrary loan if your
library does not have it.
Finally, one can purchase a copy at many railroadiana meets; prices currently are in the range
of $60-75. See also the "PRR Stuff for Sale" on this site.
Repositories of original PRR documents are best documented by the Philadelphia
Chapter PRRT&HS publication The Pennsylvania Railroad: Its Place in History, authored
by R. Dan Cupper. Contact the
Philadelphia Chapter PRRT&HS. The
cost is $14. To be brief, extensive PRR holdings are present in the following locations, in no
particular order:
If you subscribe to the Keystone, the PRRT&HS publication, you may, of course, submit
specific questions to that journal. You may wish to check with the
Pennsylvania Railroad Technical & Historical
Society. A quarterly publication is put out where you could place
a "help wanted" ad.
A PRR bibliography is maintained on the
Keystone Crossings site. This list primarily
contains "railfan press" types of books, i.e., secondary or even tertiary sources.
Most primary sources are in various libraries and archives. The primary 3-4 sources would
most likely be as follows:
Harrisburg, Pa., not far from the state capitol and William Penn Museum.
298 Buck Rd. E., P.O. Bod 3630, Greenville, Del., 19807; (302) 658-2400.
There is now an on-line catalog! Follow
the instructions on the first page. Note especially the instructions about using quotation
marks. Annual reports, books before 1984, and photographs are not yet cataloged.
Questions submitted directly should be directed as follows:
The Hagley Museum & Library holds the PRR's official equipment negative collection along
with minute books and other corporate records for the PRR proper and subsidiary and predecessor
companies lying south of Philadelphia and West of Pittsburgh and Erie. There are also selected
files from top executives in the Financial, Operating, Motive Power/Mechanical, Test,
Engineering, Personnel and Legal Departments, plus a small amount of material from the
Traffic and Publicity Departments. There are also representative samples of timetables,
track and interlocking charts, and other company forms and publications. The records are
an important resource for corporate, business, labor, technological and architectural
history. There is no genealogical information on ordinary employees and no rosters,
equipment registers or equipment drawings. In addition, Hagley has complete or near-complete
sets of annual reports for the PRR, its major predecessors and subsidiaries, as well as
many other railroads, good runs of the Pennsy and Mutual Magazine, railroad
trade journals and trade catalogs. Hagley does not have the Offical Guide or
Railway Equipment Register.
Temple University, Philadelphia, Pa.
[Information supplied by George D. Brightbill]
Lewistown, Pa., housed in the former PRR station.
This collection is still in the process of being cataloged.
The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (state archives) is documented on RLIN,
(along with Hagley plus other RLIN member libraries and archives). RLIN can be accessed as follows.
Again, thanks to Chris Baer for this info.
Or you may use the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC) web page at the Library
of Congress at http://lcweb.loc.gov/coll/nucmc. Only the
first 4-5 entries are shown, after which you must back up to the query page, type the number 5 or 6,
and continue until the search list is exhausted. For completeness, you may wish to search terms
such as "Pennsylvania Railroad" both under "corporate" and undre "subject". Use the pull-down menus
on the query page.
They say, once there, click on either the NUCMC cataloging icon or the Utilities icon."
This will get you to the RLIN manuscripts catalog (AMC file).
If you want to view only the Hagley entries, narrow the searches by
using appropriate subdivisions, which take the form of "Pennsylvania
Railroad Company. ____ Dept." (or "Office" or "Division"). The relevant
departments for Hagley are Executive Dept., Financial Dept., Operating
Dept., Transportation Dept., Engineering Dept., Motive Power Dept., Test
Dept., Personnel Dept., Safety Dept., Traffic Dept., Legal Dept., Dept. of
Special Services, and Voluntary Relief Dept. Records for Lines West may
be searched as "Pennsylvania Lines West #". Also use "Office of #",
"Chief of #", and "Pennsylvania Railroad Company. Non-railroad #", plus
the separate entries beginning "Association of Transportation #",
"Association of Freight #", #Women's Aid #" and "Pennsylvania-Reading
Seashore Lines." The display will also retrieve PHMC and other repository
records with the same or similar headings.
PHMC did all their PRR cataloging
directly on RLIN and usually at the item level, so if you call "Pennsylvania Railroad" by itself,
you will have to page through about 1200 entries.
The # is a truncation which will get all entries matching up to that point. Thus, the broadest
possible search is "Pennsylvania Rail#". Also note several entries that do not
begin with PRR: "Association of Transportation #", "Association of Freight Traffic #", "Mutual
Beneficial Association #", and "Women's Aid of #". All of our entries carry the ID code DEHV,
those for PHMC are, I think, PASV. Our entries are also linked so you can go from one to the
other by typing the command "fin RID" for "related ID".
The NUMC version prints only the records descriptions and the subject cross-entries and calls them
up in the reverse order in which they
were entered, latest first. This means that you have to scroll all the
way to the bottom of four or five entries, then go back to the top and
type in the request to see the next five, and so on. There are 1783
entries under "Pennsylvania Railroad Company". You also have to search
twice, once as corporate phrase and again as subject. The former gets you
records generated by the PRR, the second records with information about
the PRR. Unless you can limit the search, such as requesting a particular
department ("Dept." is always abbreviated, but "Division" is not) or
whatever, the number of hits will always be very unwieldy.
Thanks to Christopher Baer of the Hagley Museum, I now have some genealogical source
information to offer. There are two substantial bodies of PRR personnel files:
Bill Morlitz also notes on the PRRT&HS site that, because of the Broad Street Station
fire circa 1922 and a warehouse fire in West Philadelphia circa 1996, many employee records
were destroyed.
Dave Pierson recently mentioned on an internet list that, for family members killed
in accidents, one place to look is
http://specialcollections.tasc.dot.gov/,
which contains a search engine allowing you to search Interstate Commerce Commission reports
on accidents.
If anyone else finds anything useful in regard to genealogical research regarding PRR
employees, please let me know so that I may share it with others.
When Penn Central was formed, New York Central stock was to be traded in for new Penn Central
stock. Pennsylvania Railroad stock remained valid. [source: The Wreck of the Penn Central]
Since the Penn Central bankruptcy, the railroad assets were bundled with other bankrupt railroads
by the federal government into Conrail, which was ultimately sold off to public stockholders. Penn
Central's nonrail assets were split off into the new Penn Central, which ultimately changed its name
to American Premier Underwriters, Inc. and moved to Cincinnati.
Paul Delray wrote to Jerry Jordak (keeper of the Penn Central web site listed on the
links page) to write that PC stock had a
25-to-1 'reverse split' in the process, then underwent a 1-to-3 split. I.e., 8.333 PC stocks for
each American Premier Underwriters stocks. The same person reports that Penn Central stock is
still valid and can be exchanged for APU stock. I assume this means that Pennsylvania RR, New
York Central RR, and New Haven RR stock may still be valid. I am not sure, but would be more
pessimistic, with respect to the current value of Erie, DL&W, Lehigh Valley, CNJ, and Reading
stock.
Here is how to contact APU:
Doing PRR Research
General
Libraries, Archives
[Chris Baer supplied most of the text below:]
The Urban Archives, Samuel Paley Library, Temple University was one of
the institutions which received records from the distribution of the PRR
files. The inventory for our collection is now available on the Internet
through our web page at
www.library.temple.edu/urbana.
Please open the file for manuscripts and look under the subject Business and Economic
Development.
Search Services
Direct access to the RLIN catalog is restricted to network members, who are mostly large university
and research libraries. Many member libraries will do RLIN searches for patrons.
With the RLIN catalog, you get a summary two-line description which you can scroll through relatively
easily and then call up progressively more complete displays for those you actually want to look at.
Genealogic Research
Pennsylvania RR and Penn Central RR Stocks
1 E. 4th St.
200 Vesey St., 49th floor
Cincinnati, Ohio 45202
(513) 579-6600
(513) 579-6643
See further details on Jerry's PC Stock
Certificate Information page.
bejm@eeg.ccf.org
+1 216 444-0119
2002.03.18