Railway Employee Records for Colorado Volume Iii
RAILWAY EMPLOYEE RECORDS FOR COLORADO VOLUME III By Gerald E. Sherard (2005) When Denver’s Union Station opened in 1881, it saw 88 trains a day during its gold-rush peak. When passenger trains were a popular way to travel, Union Station regularly saw sixty to eighty daily arrivals and departures and as many as a million passengers a year. Many freight trains also passed through the area. In the early 1900s, there were 2.25 million railroad workers in America. After World War II the popularity and frequency of train travel began to wane. The first railroad line to be completed in Colorado was in 1871 and was the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad line between Denver and Colorado Springs. A question we often hear is: “My father used to work for the railroad. How can I get information on Him?” Most railroad historical societies have no records on employees. Most employment records are owned today by the surviving railroad companies and the Railroad Retirement Board. For example, most such records for the Union Pacific Railroad are in storage in Hutchinson, Kansas salt mines, off limits to all but the lawyers. The Union Pacific currently declines to help with former employee genealogy requests. However, if you are looking for railroad employee records for early Colorado railroads, you may have some success. The Colorado Railroad Museum Library currently has 11,368 employee personnel records. These Colorado employee records are primarily for the following railroads which are not longer operating. Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad (AT&SF) Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad employee records of employment are recorded in a bound ledger book (record number 736) and box numbers 766 and 1287 for the years 1883 through 1939 for the joint line from Denver to Pueblo.
[Show full text]