What's new on the NPRHA research site?

Last updated: 2026-03-02

Site-level changes

The front-end navigation pages are now HTML5/CSS3 compliant, are fully accessible by screen readers, and are more mobile-friendly. These pages also now have a footer that is similar to the "friendly front door" site.
The back-end libraries and lists now use Google technologies rather than SharePoint.
This site no longer contains any photo libraries or lists because all of that content is being moved to Railroad Archives Online.
For now, there is no site-level search but a solution is being investigated.
A thorough "Spring cleaning" was done to remove duplicate and out-dated content. All item descriptions were reviewed and edited as needed. New content was introduced in several places--see page-specific sections below.
All downloadable content has been standardized on either PDF or JPEG.
Where possible, scans of books that were previously available as separate pages have been combined into single PDFs, given modern networking speeds and storage capabilities.
The font size on pages and in lists has been increased to improve legibility. Lists use the Verdana font to help with distinguishing similar characters.

Help content is now in the "Announcements" section at the top of the page rather than in a separate menu. This section includes a link to this site updates and changes page.

A link to Dean O'Neill's 2-part overview of drawings is now provided.
The Mechanical Dept. Drawings Database list was removed because it was very incomplete and did not include any scans. Please refer to the Vista Dome Package (VDP) 2025 for this content.
A link to the AFE status register is now provided.
The steam locomotive roster now includes links to scans of the 1916 and later ICC account 51 cards, where available.
The steam locomotive roster now includes scans of class diagrams. Also, some pre-1907 classes are now included.
Two separate resources on dyanamometer car 276 were combined.

This categories on this page were changed to focus on different employee roles.
The scans of train sheets, train order books, and train registers were updated to include all that have been scanned for the VDP 2025.
A scan of the 1926 NP rules book was added.
Scans of station agent books from 1910 and 1920 were added.
Scans of hopper car assignments from 1970 were added.

BN-era maps and drawings have been moved to Railroad Archives Online.
A link to Dean O'Neill's 2-part overview of drawings is now provided.
A scan of the 1955 pockey bridge book is now provided.
A scan of the 1931 maintainence rules is now provided.
Scans of various standard plan books were replaced with superior scans from VDP 2025.
Indexes and scans of corporate AFE files on microfilm were recombined into a single resource due to greater capacity of Google storage than SharePoint.
Indexes of separate sources for engineering department AFE paper files were combined into one integrated index. Idaho Division indexing is currently in progress.
Scans of various by-station AFE index sources were combined into one integrated index.
Various system-wide BNSF resources were removed due to small amount of NP content.

sample scans of calendars added.
More sample scans of posters and advertisements added.
Brief corporate reports were separated from annual corporate reports anc category name was changed.

All-trades seniority lists were recombined into a single resource due to greater capacity of Google storage than SharePoint.

This page was re-organized and many resources moved here from other pages.
The Mystery Photos feature was significantly improved by including the text of the articles with the images. All articles have been freshly edited and image quality improved.

The NP bibliography was shortened to not include entries from The Mainstreeeter, which is its own separate list, updated through Q3 2025.
All information and photo resources were verified, with broken links fixed or removed.
A new category for museums and archives was created.