The Archive/Legacy Fund had donations of $13,428 for the year 2023!

Sustaining Members and all those contributing at the Conductor’s
Club Level are over and above that. We have raised over $179,000 and incurred about $17,000 in fund raising costs with additional donations to Lake States and C&NWHS in the last 6 years.

The BRHS Archives has a reasonable collection of technical and historic material. The Societies Archive efforts really only started in the late 1990's. At no time during the society's existence did it truly receive donations directly from the railroad( BN or BNSF). From the late 1990's to about 2007 "the Archives" consisted of two 4 drawer file cabinets and approximately 20 records boxes. A very limited number of timetables, and some empenmera.

Since the late 1990's the Archives has been financially supported by a portion of the Sustaining/Conductors Club dues dollars. This has been generally in the area of between $3000 to $9000 dollars a year with approximately $6000 as an average. Since 2015 with our cost sharing arrangement with Lake States in Baraboo on the Building we pay $3000 ( $250 a month) during the year for common facility items( lawn maintenance, snow removal, heat, electricity, etc. for our 1000 sq. ft.of archival storage area in their 5000 sq. ft. building . Pretty reasonable and cost effective for both organizations.

Collections continue to be donated and while our space looks full sometimes we are only using about 1/2 our Drawer space and we continue to shed duplicates and unrelated materials.  Sometimes the aisles are filled with projects awaiting sorting and Volunteers to place materials into assigned locations. Please review the upcoming Work Days to see if you can attend one of our sessions.

During the Summer of 2022 the CB&Q Company Negative collection as well as Drawings in the Masterson Collection were transported to the Societies Archives. As work continues on those projects many of the negatives are being scanned and will be the focus of our initial Smug Mug launch during the Summer of 2024. Drawings in the  Flat File Masterson Collection have been logged , located and scanned for use. 

During 2023 and 2024 we worked with Archive teams from other societies to promote "A Day for the Archives" to support additional awareness of our activities and fundraising support. Both events were very successful and raised additional dollars for supplies and equipment. 70 t0 75 people attended a day of programs and a day of rail travel on Metra sharing rail history.