Railway employee records for Colorado : Volume III

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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. Possible
information recorded in the book is: name of employee, date of employment, location,
job titles, reasons for job changes, weight, height, complexion, hair and eye color, birth
date and place, and marital status.
Colorado & Southern Railway Co. (C&S)
The Colorado & Southern was Colorado’s state home-grown railroad. It was, in
fact, known as “The Colorado Road”. Its pride and joys were the Texas Zephyr, flagship
of the road’s passenger fleet and the fastest train between Denver and Dallas, and steam
locomotive No. 900 which was one of the prettiest ever built.(1)
The C&S came into existence in 1898 as the result of a merger of the
narrow-gauge Denver, South Park & Pacific and the Colorado Central. It thrived until