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New York Hosts Exhibition of Barriger Railroad Collection

Written by Marybeth Luczak, Executive Editor
(Image Courtesy of The Barriger Railroad Collection of The St. Louis Mercantile Library)

(Image Courtesy of The Barriger Railroad Collection of The St. Louis Mercantile Library)

The “Travelers, Tracks and Tycoons: The Railroad in American Legend and Life” exhibition of The St. Louis Mercantile Library’s Barriger Railroad Collection will run through July 31 at The Grolier Club in New York City.

More than 150 items celebrating railroad history in North America and Europe and marking the 200th anniversary of railroading’s first decade in America are on display. Selected by Barriger Collection Curator Nicholas Fry, they include one of the earliest commercial representations of railroad equipment; a unique set of the Pacific Railroad Surveys; photographs by Andrew Russell and Alexander Gardner documenting the construction of the first transcontinental railroads; a rare diary from one of the civil engineers working on the Union Pacific in 1869; the “Whip-Poor-Will Call” whistle made for Casey Jones; children’s books on trains; one of the many valuation drawings of Grand Central Terminal held by Conrail until donated to the Library; and artwork by Leslie Ragan and others that celebrate and promote rail travel. Other landmark books, technical publications, pamphlets and posters, artwork and sheet music, artifacts, ephemera, and maps are also on view.

The exhibition represents a small portion of the railroad holdings of the Barriger Collection, which was started by railroad executive and collector John W. Barriger III (1899-1976), who amassed a personal library of more than 10,000 volumes and hundreds of boxes of archival materials as well as photographs of his rail travels. After his death, the collection was donated to the St. Louis Mercantile Library and became the nucleus of the John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library Collection. In the late 1990’s, the St. Louis Mercantile Library affiliated with the University of Missouri-St. Louis and the Barriger Collection moved with it. Today, the library holds a comprehensive collection of books and papers relating to railroads and hundreds of thousands of images, including an extensive photo archive donated by Railway Age.

For details on the exhibition, visit The Grolier Club website.

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