About this collection

The Transportation Act of 1920 required railroads to file with the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) for permission to eliminate tracks from their system. Docket cards were created by the ICC when a railroad initially filed a request.

The Interstate Commerce Commission railroad abandonment index (Accession 2014.276) collection consists of index cards to finance dockets involving the Pennsylvania Railroad, Penn Central Transportation Company, and Conrail. The cards document line abandonments and financial transactions from the 1920s through 1985.

The cards include, on the top line, a docket number, the date filed, and section of the law under which it was filed. The next line indicates the name of the railroad. The short text is an abstract of the case. For an abandonment, the county and state in which the tracks are located are usually indicated, as well as the length of track to be abandoned and the end points of the abandonment as indicated by a town name or mile posts.