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| International Ry. Periodical Archives, Free to Good Home? https://www.rypn.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=33061 |
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| Author: | Alexander D. Mitchell IV [ Mon Mar 26, 2012 12:22 am ] |
| Post subject: | International Ry. Periodical Archives, Free to Good Home? |
I'll keep this short and to the point. I'm with a crew sorting through a massive rail and traction estate. The estate was left to a certain rail history group, of which I am a member/helper. Among the things we have to deal with are LOTS of international railroad magazines from overseas--going back QUITE a ways. I have personally laid hands on the first ten volumes of Britain's Railway Magazine from 1896-1906. There are shelves with South African Railways Magazine going back to the 1940s at least, Japanese rail enthusiast and modeling magazines, French magazines, German traction publications, Australian ones, and a handful from such bizarre places as Hungary, Argentina, and whatnot. Some of these show signs of having been "rescued" or salvaged from trade association libraries such as the DOT, FRA, ICC, or whatnot. Many are in hardbound volumes, including the SAR mags. The worst, or best, of the lot? A HUGE stack of The Commercial and Financial Chronicle, the "weekly Wall Street Journal" of its day (1865-1940s) with lots of financial information on railroad and traction companies, if you know where to look. (Tom Taber's RR Periodicals Index is useful in this regard.) The down side is that it appears many, if not most or all, of the C&FCs are being disseminated online through Google Books and other online archives. We've put as much as we can manage to identify as potentially useful into portable storage for the time being pending formal estate probate (I'm told that thus far it would have filled a 40' shipping container), but we can't save it all. We've had to toss seemingly endless quantities of bureaucratic studies and reports, many in languages we couldn't read and a few from places you might be surprised to find even had railways, let alone bureaucracies related to them (Ghana? Malaysia? Senegal?). I don't want to toss the periodicals in question, but we do need a commitment from SOME rail-oriented institution that these are worthy enough for consideration. The publications should be available for free to qualified rail archives on a F.O.B. basis from a suburb of Washington, D.C. If no qualified institution or group steps forward, we'd consider (cheap) sale to an interested party on a "come and get 'em" basis. Please note that this is an informal, speculative offer. My personal estimation is that what these periodicals would bring at railroadiana auctions wouldn't even begin to cover their freight and storage costs. Moving even just the SAR volumes will involve a small pick-up truck at best--several four-foot shelves' worth. I could also point out that another nearby group/museum with which I am involved also has a "surplus" set of more modern Australian rail magazines--several titles. Want more? Please PM me for details, if interested. We may need a response by Easter. |
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