This collection contains fragmentary documentation of two aspects of the Milwaukee Road in the 1930s--the Public Relations Department and a railroad museum for which the department collected a disparate group of records.

The Public Relations Department files consist of biographical material, correspondence, and subject files concerning the history of the railroad. Correspondence concerning requests for data on the history of the Milwaukee Road is scattered throughout this series. The biographical material includes articles, clippings, and some letters of early prominent officials and employees of the Milwaukee and Mississippi Railroad, including John Hogan, employee of the Milwaukee Road for 83 years; George R. Peck, general solicitor of the railroad, and others. The E. O. Reeder collection of obituary notices of railroad officials and employees, 1879-1934, can also be found here. The departmental correspondence file, 1929-1936, concerns requests for historical data and routine operations of the department. The subject files give a fragmentary picture of the history of the Milwaukee Road and its activities in Illinois, Missouri, Minnesota, and Wisconsin between 1847 and 1940. Included in these files are pamphlets, a term paper by Helen M. Garvey (University of Chicago student, 1909), clippings, and articles.

The materials collected for the railroad museum are predominantly bound volumes, reports, circulars, and scrapbooks which were gathered for museum displays. These records are very fragmented, being only samplings of record series. They include correspondence, 1856-1954, and letterpress volumes, 1883-1896, as well as building, maintenance, and operation records generated by the Milwaukee Road between 1888 and 1902. There is also a sampling of financial records of the Milwaukee line and eight other railroads with which it merged. Scrapbooks which contain clippings, early correspondence, vouchers, and receipts; miscellaneous reports; and a subject file on the Custer Creek Wreck (June 19, 1938) make up the remainder of this collection.