The Robert B. Watson collection of Pennsylvania Railroad Company documents, 1876-1968 (bulk, 1900-1957).

  1. Resources
  2. View Resource

ArchivalResource

The Robert B. Watson collection of Pennsylvania Railroad Company documents, 1876-1968 (bulk, 1900-1957).

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/741755809

After his retirement, Watson gradually began to thin and dispose of his collection. This accession consists of the portion that Hagley determined best complemented its holdings of PRR records. Other discrete portions are found in Accessions, 2349, 2373 and 2412, and separate gifts were made to the Imprints and Pictorial Collections Departments. Of particular note are the "diagram books" which contain simplified side and end views with principal dimensions for most classes of locomotives and cars in use from the late 1800s to about 1965. "Locomotive registers" are printed official lists of locomotives in service down to about 1920. Most of the documents relate to the development of PRR locomotives and cars in the mid-twentieth century. Other items of note include: a schematic track map of the Eastern Region (ca. 1955); painting diagram for the T1 locomotive; a 1898 station log from Lewistown Jct., Pa., possibly kept by William N. Watson; "Special Apprentice News," a short-lived mimeograph newsletter covering the work and social lives of mechanical engineer-trainees at Altoona (1921); strike notice from the 1922 Shop Crafts Strike; copy of the CIO News documenting PRR resistance to organizing drives; articles marking the PRR's 50th and 100th anniversaries; a timetable from the summer of 1876 at the time of travel to the Centennial; and a program for the 1952 closing of Broad Street Station in Philadelphia.

6.2 linear ft.

Hagley Museum & Library

Information

SNAC Resource ID: 8114148

Hagley Museum & Library

Related Entities

There are 9 Entities related to this resource.

Timken Roller Bearing Company

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6324ntk (corporateBody)

Watson, Robert B., 1931-

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6pp2ffw (person)

Robert B. Watson was a mechanical engineer with the Pennsylvania Railroad Company from 1955 and eventually the company's Coordinator on the Northeast Corridor Demonstration Project . Watson later worked for the consulting firm of LTK Engineering Services until his retirement in 1998. His father Bruce B. Watson worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad Company's Test Department at Altoona from 1921 to 1958, his last post being that of Chief Inspector. Both Watsons preserved company documents that came...

Claymont Trials (1933-1938 : Claymont, Del.)

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6xm6wt6 (corporateBody)

Broad Street Station (Philadelphia, Pa.)

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6q8662r (corporateBody)

Pennsylvania Railroad

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w68d3k0m (corporateBody)

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and traffic from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until the decline of the northeast's and midwest's dominance of manufacturing, caused by the evolution of the interstate highway system and the advancements in air transportation. Originally created by Philadelphia merchants in 1846, it sought to build a trunk route from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh via the Allegheny Mountains to c...

Watson, Bruce B. (Bruce Bastress), 1898-1958

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6r571w3 (person)

Bruce B. Watson, of Sunbury, Pennsylvania, graduated from Pennsylvania State College in 1921 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Railway Mechanical Engineering. He later became an inspector for the Pennsylvania Railroad's Test Department in Altoona, Pennsylvania. From the description of Bruce B. Watson scrapbook, 1917-1921. (Pennsylvania State University Libraries). WorldCat record id: 645101428 ...

Geertz, A. O.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w67m3mv0 (person)

Women's Aid of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6dw01g6 (corporateBody)

Keller, W. M. (William McKinley), 1901-1974

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6p56ds9 (person)

William McKinley Keller, a railroad mechanical engineer and executive, was born in Pittsburgh on August 29, 1901. He received his engineering training at the University of Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania State College. Keller entered the railroad industry in 1919 as an apprentice at the Altoona (Pa.) shops of the Pennsylvania Railroad. By 1940 he had advanced through several inspector posts to the position of assistant engineer of the test department. In 1941 he became forem...