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.

If that's what you're giving away I can only imagine what you're keeping!

Steve

We literally don't have enough room to keep everything we did take into custody. It would require a new archive facility, armies of volunteers to process, and/or the dispersal of much stuff to other archives/groups or the auction house. A few artifacts (including a licensed but vintage van and some bits of hardware) have reportedly been sold or traded already just to help pay for the dumpsters (big, long, trailer-length ones, not little ones). Much of the stuff packed for storage is likely to exist already in the current archives of the places/groups in question, and was packed to err on the side of caution. We literally don't have enough "warm bodies" for us to let me set up my laptop and check various inventory holdings on site.

An example: There APPEARS to be a complete set of the R&LHS Bulletin in this clutter--I personally grabbed and set aside what appears to be #1-100. We have a complete, hardbound set of #100 up, but need at least some of the 1-100; the better copies will be retained and the surplus offered up to other libraries or buyers.

A word of warning to all of you: The way things are going in the rail hobby, this will increasingly be YOUR scenario, as the hoarders who never married and filled up houses with this stuff pass on and, in good faith and with good intentions, "saddles" you with these "albatrosses."

It sounds like you've found some fairly rare material (and I think I know who collected it!)

Have you thought about offering it to some of the British/ European museums.

NRHS has a chapter in the UK and they might know who to contact on their side of the pond.

Bob H

It's so obvious I'm sure you've probably already thought of it, but could these make a useful addition to the John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library?

The foreign titles could be unique enough here in the US to not already be represented in their collection.

There is also the G. W Bush Library in Austin, they have a lot of RR collections;
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q= ... OG6srQI8Ww

Degolyer on SMU used to take the obscure rr collections when others would not;
http://smu.edu/cul/degolyer/collections2.htm

Guys, guys, guys............

I/we DON'T need a list of places that MIGHT be interested.

We need a representative of a place, or even a crazy collector, to say "Here's the address to waybill them to, let us know the freight bill" or "Where and when can I show up with a truck?"

Barriger, DeGolyer, or AC Kalmbach-Chattanooga could work, but someone needs to speak up to/for them, not just throw stuff out there and see if any of it sticks.

Good afternoon:

Please check with Roberto A. Sarmiento, Head, Transportation Library at Northwestern University. I've been donating material to his library and he's interested in foreign material.

His contact information:
1970 Campus Drive
Evanston, IL 60208-2300
r-sarmiento@northwestern.edu
Ph 847-491-2913

Give him my regards,

Bill Hough

Sorry, didn't see this before replying. My bad.

If you have a list of what's on offer, I could run it by Roberto.

Thanks.

BH

Dear Alexander -

I am the Secretary of the Railway Society of Southern Africa (Natal Branch), based in Durban, South Africa. We have an extensive library of railway books and magazines housed in what used to be the old SAR station called Inchanga, midway between Durban and Pietermaritzburg. Included in our organisation are a preservation group (Umgeni Steam Railway) and a Railway History Society.

Although we are a volunteer group with limited resources, we would most certainly be interested in the SAR items listed, especially the SAR&H Magazine and any other material pertaining to SAR, NGR, CGR or CSAR - and possibly even railways from neighbouring countries such as RR, CFM, CFB etc.

Please bear us in mind when disposing of any of this correspondence - I am sure we can come to some arrangement with regards the shipping costs.

Kind regards


Ashley Peter

Mr. Peter:

You will understand that I will request confirmation of the group and its mission..... We Americans get a few too many e-mails from exceeding polite Nigerians, if you get my drift.

I would be most happy to try and arrange a salvage/shipment, but be aware that the costs involved are NOT inconsequential. It would involve 1) moving the entire set from one location to another when that wasn't planned in the first place; and 2) arranging for a shipment internationally--and the SAR magazines alone will be somewhere between a large crate and a small pallet shipment weighing a couple hundred pounds. I will try to arrange to get in and appraise the scope of the mission (photos, etc. to you), and also try desperately to have set aside any remaining African railway materials of historic value.

Judging from the amount of African art this late collector had in his place, I think he would feel happy that at least some of this stuff may be going back to its native land!

Thanks for the quick response.

I completely understand your concerns about being spammed - we are also prime targets here in South Africa...!

Probably about the easiest way to confirm our credentials would be to view our website www.umgenisteamrailway.co.za as our local preservation group, which has been in existence since 1982, has effectively outgrown the parent body (Railway Society of Southern Africa). In fact, if the collector concerned was really serious in his interest in South African railways, he might well have copies of our national journal, SA RAIL, in his collection - this has been published continuously since the Society was established in April 1960.

I will put out some feelers amongst our membership to determine whether anybody has contacts in the transport/shipping industry and could assist in moving such a large consignment at a more reasonable price.

Kind regards


Ashley