Rock Island Southern Railway historical outline, 1902-1907

The James T. Ratcliffe collection of railroad photographs and clippings contains newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, historical outlines, and published material regarding trolleys and electric train transportation.

Notable in the collection are two scrapbooks filled with photographs. The first scrapbook primarily includes photographs of trolleys. Many of the images relate to Quad Cities companies such as Davenport City Railway; Tri City Railway; Clinton, Davenport and Muscatine; Mississippi Traction; and Rock Island Southern. Also included are photographs of trolleys from New York City, Massachusetts, Baltimore, Chicago, and Cincinnati. A few pages of the scrapbook are dedicated to photographs sent to Ratcliffe by his friend, J. W. Shannon. Shannon's photographs depict his visits to the Fox River Trolley Museum (South Elgin, Illinois) in 1985 and Depot Square (Duluth, Minnesota) in 1986. Most photographs of trolleys from outside the Quad Cities region appear on postcards sent to Ratcliffe by Shannon. The second scrapbook contains photographs that cover a broader geographical area. Several pages are dedicated to the CRANDIC (Cedar Rapids and Iowa City) Line, the Illinois Terminal Company, and the Des Moines Interurban. Also included are photographs of the Chicago Elevated and rail lines in Utah and Winnipeg, Canada. Besides photographs of the trains themselves, the scrapbook includes images of depots and stations and one newspaper clipping about busses.

Also included in this collection is a group of newspaper clippings about the Tri-City Railway Company. The clippings were taken from the Rock Island Argus and the Quad City Times during 1936 and 1940. The clippings feature captioned photographs, including one of the first horse cars in the Quad Cities, the last horse car in Milan, the first trolley in the Quad Cities, and early motor coaches and buses. There are several articles on the change from trolleys to buses. Among these is an article about Charlie Schellhorn, the controller of the first and last trolley runs on Brady Street in Davenport, Iowa.