For those of you looking to expand your reference library, Amazon has a nearly complete collection of Moody’s Transporation Manuals from 1905-1990 (missing five years) for $3383.29.
One has to wonder, why didnt they round down to $3383.00?
For those of you who are interested in the financial aspect of railroading, or have difficulty falling asleep at night, these Moody’s are great reference books. Published yearly, they contained detailed (make that DETAILED) information about each railroad’s history, financial situation, bonds, and tons of industry data.
If you have access to a university or college library or a decent sized public library, take a look at these publications, particularly those during the premerger era.
[2c] Some railroad museum ought to snag on to those and any bound volumes of the ICC decisions. Colorado Railroad Museum has much more complete sets that are like gold. The shiny toys on the rails are OK I guess, but the museums with functioning libraries and archivists are the class acts.
I agree, the libraries and archives are real history. The Moody’s and Official Guides, complete with the musty smell, are a little dry to read, but the material is so valuable.
The bound volumes of the ICC reports aren’t that uncommon. They are available in many law libraries (they are considered “case books”), although the indices needed to easily find particular decisions sometimes aren’t. What’s a little more rare are bound copies of the ICC Valuation Reports, which are a real treasure trove of historical information.
CRRM has the bound ICC records and Valuation Reports…In contrast, Denver University Sturm Law Library and its vaunted Intermodal Institute (*Joke) do not.
(*) Why is the Intermodal Institute a joke?..Who else would demand that they get 8 1/2 semi truckloads of ICC files 1976-1996 for their collection [instead of the National Archives] and then through pure negligence allow 6-7 trailerloads of those documents to be destroyed by water. The surviving documents, while allegedly saved and restored, are not available to researchers.