To avoid sidetracking a relatively unrelated discussion...

What are some of the best railroad libraries in North America?

For the sake of this discussion, "best" means large collections that are reasonably accessible.

Membership fees are acceptable, it costs money to build and operate a library.

What's not acceptable are policies that make it pretty much impossible to view the collection.

So, for example, while Kalmbach has a very impressive in house collection of books and photos, it's not open to the public (nor should it be, it's not designed for that purpose) so it's outside the realm of this discussion.

The same applies to any collection, no matter how impressive, that resides in a locked vault suitable for a remake of "Raiders of the Lost Ark".

The John W. Barringer National Railroad Library at the St. Louis Mercantile Library is simply fantastic. It is affiliated with the University of Missouri-St. Louis, is open to the public and has a super friendly staff.

They have an excellent array if both primary and secondary source material.

Off hand, I can think of several:

California State Railroad Museum:
http://www.csrmf.org/library-and-collections

Railroad Museum of PA:
http://www.rrmuseumpa.org/about/library/

John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library
http://www.umsl.edu/mercantile/barriger/index.html

Northwestern University Transportation Library
http://www.library.northwestern.edu/lib ... on-library

Colorado Railroad Museum
http://coloradorailroadmuseum.org/library/

UC Berkeley Institute of Transportation Studies Library
http://library.its.berkeley.edu/

New York Transit Museum Archives
http://www.mta.info/mta/museum/#archives

In addition, many railroad museums (WRM,OERM, IRM etc.) maintain libraries/archives related to their area of expertise. Google specific organization for more information. There's also the NRHS library discussed on another thread, but it's not clear to me how accessible it is right now.

BH

The library at the Museum of Transportation near St. Louis is also good and close to the Barriger Library. It has more on transit, streetcars, etc. But it isn't as user friendly as it is only available by appointment. No-one may be there if you just drop in. I would contact the curator, Nick Ohlman, at nohlman@stlouisco.com to set up an appointment and discuss what you are looking into.

Here is a classic example of the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society blowing the NRHS out of the water when it comes to facilitating access to railroad history rather than serving the desires of "foamers":

http://rlhs.org/Reference/research.shtml

That web page lists basically all the publicly-accessible specialist libraries and collections (aside from, say, the engineering libraries of state university and Federal repository academic libraries) where a rail history student can expect to get some actual research done.

If you want to be completely overwhelmed with options, thank Tom Taber III for this 1993 tome:

http://books.northwestern.edu/viewer.ht ... 5793663-bk

And then add on his 2004 addenda:

http://books.northwestern.edu/viewer.ht ... 5794569-bk

It's been my experience that the vast majority of railfans are utterly clueless about what is actually available to them through publicly-accessible libraries, inter-library loan, and simply going to a university library or museum library. Don't let eBay, Alibrus, and the next train show seduce you into the fanatical addiction to ownership; there are vast archives out there just awaiting your perusal and use, and/or enough interest expressed in them to justify retention, funding, volunteers, and digitization projects.

So my question in all of this is, is the Kalmbach Memorial Library moving with the rest of the NMRA's collection to California? According to their website, its the official collection of Tennessee. "On May 10, 2004, Governor Phil Bredesen signed into law a bill which designates the A. C. Kalmbach Memorial Library as an "Official Railroad Library of the State of Tennessee"

The N&W Historical Society (http://www.nwhs.org) has a searchable archive of their collection.
ASME also has a library, located in Kansas City ?, which had been located in NYC.

Dave

That's sure the way *I* read it.

And, of course, PRR 1361 was declared "The Official State Steam Locomotive of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania" ages ago, for all the good THAT did.

Those "proclamations" are good for perhaps a bit of press coverage, and little more.