The Interstate Commerce Commission for almost a century had jurisdiction over railroad rates, mergers, abandonments, stock issuances, etc. Much of this information was published in summary form in bound volumes, ICC REPORTS, which made it to 366 volumes before the ICC was abolished in favor of the Surface Transportation Board. Many law libraries, college libraries and official government document libraries have complete sets of these bound volumes, and an on-line set can be found at https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007911857. This source only allows downloads of pages, one page at a time in PDF format, so for lengthy reports, it would probably be easier to request a photocopy from a library.

Within the ICC Report series, many of the volumes deal with rate cases, tariffs, etc., and are probably of lesser interest to the rail historian. Other volumes are marked on spine as “Finance Reports” and contain finance dockets dealing with track abandonments, mergers, stock issuances, and after 1957, passenger train discontinuances. A PARTIAL list of the volumes with Finance Dockets includes: 65-67-70-71-72-76-79-82-86-90-94-99
-105-106-111-117-124-131-138-145-150-162-207-212-217-221-224-228-233-236-239-240-242-244-247-249-252-254-257-261-267-271-275-282-290-295
-307-312-317-320-324-327-328-330-331-333-334. This is NOT a complete list – please submit additions or corrections.

The ICC in about 1914 started a lengthy process of establishing the value of each railroad. This involved taking an inventory of everything on every division of the railroad. Summary text of the valuation of various carriers was first contained in the regular ICC REPORTS series, in volumes 75-84
-97-103-106-108-110-114-116-119-121-125-127-130-133-134-135-137-141-143-149. Starting with the twenty-second volume of Valuation Reports, a separate number series was initiated and volumes 22-57 are contained in that series. After Volume 48, most of the published data involves pipelines rather than railroads. The actual ICC valuation papers included maps, building sketches, detailed inventories down to the contents of depots, details of equipment acquisition, etc. The actual valuation papers are held by the National Archives in Suitland MD, and a more thorough description can be found through Google searches. An index of the railroads covered by the ICC Valuation process can be found here: http://rnetzlof.pennsyrr.com/iccindex/index.html

An incomplete list of MP, MV and KO&G finance dockets is attached – this list was prepared a number of years ago to assist with Arkansas railroad research and thus does NOT include many other dockets covering activity in other states. Beginning in the late 1940s, lesser finance dockets (as determined by the ICC) were not published, but the finance docket numbers were listed in the back pages of each volume.

Please submit additions and corrections.

Bill Pollard

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