Northern Pacific Railway Co Reports and Correspondence of Trainmaster
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Scope and Contents
Inclusive date range: 1918-1931
Bulk date: 1918
This collection consists of the correspondence of Austin W. McClelland, the trainmaster for the Northern Pacific Railway Company's Staples Station in Staples, Minnesota. The correspondence dates from 1918. There are three pieces of correspondence that are not from this year, one letter from 1925 and two reports from 1931.
The correpsondence offers an intimate view into the daily operations of a train yard. The telegrams and letters cover everything from reporting trains running late, to repairs made to trains in the yard, to personal thanks from passengers, to freight bills, to disciplinary notices, and to employees asking for days off or telegraphing out sick.
Of note is a piece of correspondence from W. G. McAdoo, director general of railroads, dated March 22, 1918 regarding the nationalization of all railroads as part of the war mobilization.
The correspondence is arranged chronologically.
Dates
- 1918-1931
Creator
- Northern Pacific Railway (NP) (creator, Organization)
- McClelland, A. W. (creator, Person)
Language of Materials
Collection material in English
Conditions Governing Access
Access to the collections in the Kheel Center is restricted. Please contact a reference archivist for access to these materials.
Conditions Governing Use
This collection must be used in keeping with the Kheel Center Information Sheet and Procedures for Document Use.
Biographical / Historical
The Northern Pacific Railway Company [NP] built the Staples Station in 1909. It was designed by the same architectural firm, Reed and Stem, which designed the NP's King Street Station in Seattle, Washington and New York's Grand Central Terminal. The Staples depot and freight house were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.
The Staples Station served as a division point for the NP. As such, in additon to the passenger areas in the depot, the building housed office space for the trainmaster, superintendant, and other NP personnel who were responsible for overseeing NP operations in the neighboring train yards. The yards included a freight house, a round house, and repair in place tracks. Serving as a division point also meant that the Staples Station was where train crews would start and end their shifts, or even use overnight facilities provided for employees.
Due to its position as a division point, the correspondence of the trainmaster A. W. McClelland covers a wide variety of topics related to running a well-functioning train yard and station.
Extent
0.33 cubic feet
Abstract
Reports and correspondence of the trainmaster, A. W. McClelland, of the Northern Pacific Railway Company in Staples, Minnesota.
Quantity:
0.3 linear ft.
Forms of Material:
Records (documents) .
General
- Contact Information:
- Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives 227 Ives Hall Tower Road Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 (607) 255-3183 kheelref@cornell.edu https://catherwood.library.cornell.edu/kheel/
- Compiled by:
- E. Parker, April 01, 2017
- EAD encoding:
- E. Parker, April 02, 2017
Processing Information
Collectoin consists of extremely fragile paper and requires careful handling.
- Title
- Northern Pacific Railway Co. Reports and Correspondence of Trainmaster
- Status
- Completed
- Author
- Compiled by E. Parker
- Date
- April 02, 2017
- Language of description
- Undetermined
- Script of description
- Code for undetermined script
- Sponsor
- This collection was processed with the help of generous funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC).
Revision Statements
- 02/23/2024: This resource was modified by the ArchivesSpace Preprocessor developed by the Harvard Library (https://github.com/harvard-library/archivesspace-preprocessor)
Repository Details
Part of the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives Repository