Hi Wangyal,

What do you need this for?

HathiTrust has a bunch of Official Guides, but the ones from 1930 on are copyrighted so you can't access the entire issues.  Also, they may not have digitized the fold-up map inserts like what you link to. There are also a lot of older ones freely available, like at http://www.naotc.org/oldguides/, but in the 1930s you run up against the copyright issue.

The originals are on newsprint and typically falling apart. The map inserts usually may be missing. There have been some reprints, which are more rugged and less likely to have missing pages, and also on CD, but I'm not sure if these typically include the map, or when it stopped being included as part of the publication.  (I have some of the reprints and a CD, but they're packed away at the moment.)  You can probably get some of these through ILL once that's up and running better. See OCLC 4676078 for a reprint of January 1930. OCLC 70952579 is the January 1938 issue on CD. I might have this, but can't remember a map insert, and I'm not sure how well they'd digitize it (probably not as professionally as LC). If I run across it, I'll tell you. The listings for individual railroads usually have stylized maps of that company.

If someone needs a complete map of railways, I sort of doubt that a single-country map will have all of the smaller local branches.  You probably need to look at larger scale map. The RM Commercial Atlases are good.  There have been several series of railway atlases showing all historical lines, made for train buffs, such as https://www.steam-powered-video.co.uk/acatalog/USA_Railroads.html, although these will show everything ever constructed, not a point-in-time, which sounds like what you need.

It is true that starting with the Depression and also the increase in better highways, a lot of smaller companies and lesser branches of big companies were abandoned.  So, the 1930s will be different than the 1923 map.

--Mark
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Mark A. Thomas
GIS Specialist and Librarian for Economics
226B Bostock Library / 919-660-5853 / [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>



From: Maps-L: Map Librarians, etc. <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Tsering W. Shawa
Sent: Friday, October 9, 2020 2:04 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Railway Map of the United States

I am looking for a railway map of the United States published in the 1930s. We do have this map (https://www.loc.gov/item/2006627696/<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.loc.gov/item/2006627696/__;!!OToaGQ!8R66hlOsa2gFjWi5Z3gRl3khpm28zPdKfmCnSnvJtl3erdBR30kBlOaUUo8h-4uGpHQ$>) but it was published in 1923. I am not sure whether the National Railway Publication Company published a similar large map in the 1930s or not. If they have published such a map, do any of you have this map?

Thanks,
-Wangyal


Tsering Wangyal Shawa

GIS and Map Librarian

Head, Map and Geospatial Information Center

Peter B. Lewis Library, Room 226

Washington Road & Ivy Lane

Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544

Telephone: 609-258-6804

[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>

http://library.princeton.edu/collections/pumagic<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/library.princeton.edu/collections/pumagic__;!!OToaGQ!8R66hlOsa2gFjWi5Z3gRl3khpm28zPdKfmCnSnvJtl3erdBR30kBlOaUUo8hmYxOjrM$>