Research & Archives

Great Northern Railway Research and Archives

New!  GNRHS and NPRHA jointly operate large archival facilities at Jackson Street Roundhouse in St. Paul, MN and at the Pacific Northwest Railroad Archive (PNRA) in Burien, WA. For years the groups have been painstakingly cataloging hundreds of thousands of documents, drawings, photos and artifacts. A Joint Archives Committee is working to make indexes and scans of those materials available on the web. The site is available at http://www.gn-npjointarchive.org. You'll find so far:

* an index to nearly 100,000 GN AFE (Authorization for Expenditure) records in searchable/sortable form
* 9,600 structure drawings (mostly GN, NP and SP&S) from the BN Aperture Card collection
* 4,323 station plat maps from same
* an index to 24,435 bridge/building drawings from same
* a Cascade Division sampler including photos, blueprints, & dispatcher train sheets
* photo collections of Cordell Newby, Gene Hawk, Norm Keyes, Doug Wingfield, Hal Will and more

There's more coming, but this is already one of the largest collections of historic railroad materials on the Internet.

This project is built on years of efforts by dozens of people, including everyone who's ever donated materials or archived, scanned, catalogued, remodeled, or otherwise helped preserve the railroads' historical materials. The technology's role here is simply to "bring that work to light" – to make it broadly available to members, researchers and the public worldwide. "Thank you" to all involved.

http://www.gn-npjointarchive.org

Continue your search at the GNRHS Archives, which is located at the Minnesota Transportation Museum - Jackson Street Roundhouse in St. Paul, Minnesota.

The late Max Ulver put together a fabulous database of libraries, museums and historical societies which have Great Northern-related resources available.  See http://www.gnrhs.org/gn_resources.htm  It has not been updated recently, so it is suggested you "Google" the institution to ascertain current contact information.

The Minnesota Historical Society has a wealth of information on the GN Railway including a huge selection of official GN documents. Their address is: 345 Kellogg Boulevard West, Saint Paul, MN 55102-1906. Their phone number is: 651/296-6126. Their hours are Tue, Wed, Fri & Sat from 1000 to 1700, Thu from 1000 to 2100, Sun 1200 to 1700. The museum is closed Monday. Their web address is http://www.mnhs.org

The Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway has divested most GN corporate records to GNRHS or MHS, but has retained a small selection of photos and artwork. Their web site is http://www.bnsf.com

The Hill papers formerly held at the James J. Hill Reference Library have been transferred to MHS (see above)

For Genealogy inquiries, visit http://www.gnrhs.org/genealogy.htm