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In the WWI era, this country had a different view of Government vs. large corporations and there was serious discussion of nationalizing the railroads. The Interstate Commerce Commission was directed to figure out how much each railroad had invested in their plant & property. They sent people out to study each line mile by mile and describe everything in sufficient detail to calculate its value. In the case of the B&M's 1892 Newburyport, MA depot, this produced 10 pages of scale plans & detail drawings, down to a list of the furniture & type of clock.
Most of this paper left Washington when the ICC was shut down in the 1980s. Usually, it went to a state university library. Railroad historical societies are often involved with the holding libraries, working on indexing & access.
I envision this thread as a place to accumulate facts & pointers about the valuation reports. My facts today are:
Wikipedia has transcribed summaries of the docket for each RR that was valued. This is mostly good for corporate family trees & dates:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...ICC_valuations
The Rice Index of valuation dockets was prepared in 1951 at the behest of the AAR. Robert Netzlof transcribed it and it's available on the web here:
http://rnetzlof.pennsyrr.com/iccindex/
The next step is investigating how to get from a docket number to the actual contents in a general way (I know how for the B&M). If someone who already knows this beats me to posting, no problem at all.
Most of this paper left Washington when the ICC was shut down in the 1980s. Usually, it went to a state university library. Railroad historical societies are often involved with the holding libraries, working on indexing & access.
I envision this thread as a place to accumulate facts & pointers about the valuation reports. My facts today are:
Wikipedia has transcribed summaries of the docket for each RR that was valued. This is mostly good for corporate family trees & dates:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...ICC_valuations
The Rice Index of valuation dockets was prepared in 1951 at the behest of the AAR. Robert Netzlof transcribed it and it's available on the web here:
http://rnetzlof.pennsyrr.com/iccindex/
The next step is investigating how to get from a docket number to the actual contents in a general way (I know how for the B&M). If someone who already knows this beats me to posting, no problem at all.
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