By Railfan & Railroad Staff

ATLANTA — Norfolk Southern is donating the Southern Railway’s archive — a collection of documents and images pertaining to the Southern and dozens of predecessor companies — to the Atlanta History Center. Along with hundreds of thousands of documents and more than 20,000 photos, NS is giving a $500,000 grant to the museum to help catalog it all.

The donation, announced Monday, was first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The donation comes just weeks before NS opens its new headquarters in Atlanta. 

“The history of Southern Railway is inseparable from the history of this region,” said NS CEO Jim Squires. “This treasure trove of material belongs in Atlanta, and there’s no better home than the Atlanta History Center.”

According to the newspaper, some of the archive has already arrived and the rest will be delivered before the end of the year. 

“This puts us on the map as a museum with a quintessential railroad collection,” said Atlanta History Center President and CEO Sheffield Hale. “It gives us that piece of Atlanta history, and regional history, with such granular detail and so many stories we wouldn’t otherwise have.”