The Railroads Collection is a subject-based collection that contains correspondence regarding the building of various railroads, traveling on railroads, etc. It also includes timetables and printed matter pertaining to railroads in the United States, mainly in the Midwest and western United States, and a scrapbook of fronts of railroad timetables from the United States dated 1881. In addition, this collection contains a report relating to the transcontinental railroad. Probably a draft, and of unidentified origin, this report relates to plans in the mid-nineteenth century to construct a national Pacific railroad, and, citing the potential of American development in California and Oregon, focuses on the construction of the Missouri portion of this proposed transcontinental railroad.