Established in 1984 as a special collection of the St. Louis Mercantile Library, the John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library stands today as one of North America’s largest and finest railroad history collections. Named after the noted twentieth century railroad executive, John W. Barriger, III (1899-1976), whose collection forms its heart, the Library has grown to become a major resource for the history of railroad business and technology as well as for the study of railroading’s multidimensional influence on the American economy, society and culture.

Many of the images you see hare come from the scrapbooks of John W. Barriger III. Mr. Barriger took his camera with him as he investigated railroads as part of this work with the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and later as the President of the Monon, P&LE, Katy and Boston and Maine Railroads. Since we started the site in 2013, we have also added images from other collections in the library.

Higher quality images can be obtained from the St. Louis Mercantile Library. For information regarding publication use of the images, please contact the library.

If you have questions contact us at fryn@umsl.edu

Support for the Barriger Library's digitization efforts is provided by generous grants from our members, the Barriger Library Board and The Union Pacific Foundation, the CSX Foundation, the NS Foundation and the KCS Foundation.