The Wason Manufacturing Company Collection

Exciting news!  We have identified the Wason Manufacturing Company Collection as a good candidate for a new grant project.  This collection consists of 3000 negatives and their prints, documenting the cars built by the railways around the country.  The collection dates from 1906 to 1938 and has sample photographs from every order completed during that time period.  What a great resource for restoration professionals and railway modellers!

Here are some photographs of our adventure, retrieving the collection from our storage facility in the Bootts Cotton Mill in Lowell, Massachusetts.

The Bootts Cotton Mill where we have a storage unit.

One of the negative albums.  The albums hold 100 3x5 negatives.  We have 30 albums.

The index to one of the negative albums, indicating the company, the kind of car, and the various shots (interior, side view, trucks, etc.), and sometimes the year and order number

The mounted prints that correspond with the negatives in file drawers.

A mounted builder's photograph.