About 10 years ago an older gentleman gave me a collection of his annual reports and employee magazines. Would museum's be interested in this stuff? They are from the 70s-90s so I don't think any of this stuff is collectible. About the only things that peaked my interest were a few Southern Ties and some material with Southern Pacific Santa Fe on it.

Or should it just be trashed?

This is the kind of thing that a short-sighted museum would trash today and most museums would be fighting over 100 years from now. I am sure the right museum would appreciate it very much!

Robert

I wholeheartedly agree with Robert. Annual reports will prove valuable 20 or more years in the future when "newbies" want to have a better detailed background of an earlier era which simply cannot be delineated in typical railroad history books. Employee magazines ("house organs") are equally valuable for the same reason. And, it is unlikely that any corporation is going to go back and digitize their past ARs and employee-focused publications for posterity.

Trust me, one of the most valuable tools for researchers 50 or 100 years down the line is company ephemera of this nature. To give just one example, imagine perusing the N&W annual reports and employee magazines from 1944 to 1960 and tracking, in real time, how steam went from "our saving grace" to "equipment non grata" by reading between the lines in what was mentioned and not mentioned in the public policy statements of the annual reports. Ditto the PRR. Some of the writing in the Penn Central Post has to be seen to be disbelieved incredulously--talk about attempting to polish a turd.........

Let's also point out that 1970s-1990s covers the before-and-after of rail deregulation. I can just see some future RR CEO doing a college thesis based in part on what those annual reports say.

Your first mission, should you decide to dispose of it, is to find out who has what accessible to researchers. Annual reports end up on file in a lot of places (university libraries, business libraries, etc.), and it seems every railfan grabs them even if they never actually do anything with them. Employee publications are another matter.

Check with nearby rail museums and simply ask if they have/want what you have--Kentucky Railway Museum, TVRM, NMRA Chattanooga, Roanoke's two museums, etc. Check with state university libraries nearby and see if they have them on hand or any interest. Finally, local historical societies and state archives could be brought into the equation. If you find that more complete sets are publicly accessible in several locations, then you might feel free to just give them to some budding toddler railfan for pictures to cut out for scrapbooking.

If worst comes to worst, give me a shout with what you have, and I'll check with the Maryland Rail Heritage Library and see what it has in stock that it might want.

Another possibility to consider in the case of a large and fairly complete collection of railroad company publications is to drop a note to Pat McKnight at Steamtown NHS informing him of exactly what publications you have and inquiring whether they might like to have the opportunity to scan or study them. They are doing a tremendous job of archiving and documenting publications and paperwork at Steamtown that has the potential to be a major information library for future historians.

PC