H. H. Copeland & Son: Freight Traffic Data & Maps

Introduction

H. H. Copeland & Son was a New York based investment services firm who compiled and distributed freight traffic data for railroads to better inform their clients. These records are held only in a few known repositories today: Harvard University's Baker Library, Northwestern University's Transportation Library, the Library of Congress, and the John W. Barriger National Railroad Library at UM-St. Louis's Mercantile Library. The resources shared below were acquired from the first two locations, while additional items at LOC that I have not yet acquired are noted below.

New data was offered each year; in some isolated cases, a document covered two or more years. It does not appear that any one location has a 'complete' set of resources; there seems to be a lot of overlap, but each has some unique items. There is no consistency on railroad coverage. Not all locations have finding aids, nor are those finding aids necessarily complete (Harvard's is NOT,) so the full scope available has not yet been determined.

Princeton & Stanford also have some H.H.Copeland "Comparative Analysis..." which are financial data very different then what is shared here, and of less use to most historians and modelers. Some of those holdings are available on hathitrust.org and other online book repositories.

The freight traffic data available comes in the following forms:

Freight Traffic Density by Divisions and Direction: this is a map (and listed as such below,) of each railroad broken into segments, with Net Ton Miles of Revenue and Company Freight depicted for each direction along a segment;

Freight Traffic Density: the data used to generate the map above offered in a tabular format;

Freight Traffic Distribution: a chart depicting density (net ton miles) and percentage of total ton miles related to percentage of total mileage;

Traffic Interchanged: tabular data of loaded cars (occasionally tons,) delivered to and received from each interchange point;

Statistics: Density and net ton miles per dollar outstanding debt for individual companies operated: mortgaged, owned, leased.

Data

My focus has been to collect extant New England and Canadian railroad Copeland data, and the tables below reflect that. It is common that libraries discourage large format scanning for visitors, but encourage documenting their collections with cell phone cameras, overhead scanners, etc, which do not make contact with nor flatten the documents. Consequently, the images below may have string weights, fingers, keystoning, and/or blurry edges, but the data is available. File size runs from 1 to 5 MB each. I have made no effort to crop or otherwise adjust or compress the files, and in some instances, I took a second photo to better capture a portion of an image (ask if you cannot read something you need ;)

At Harvard, there are a couple pieces of cardstock with miniature versions, like contact prints, of some 1920's era maps which are otherwise rare and unavailable. I shot those, but the images are very difficult to read; only some comparative assessments can be made from them. I also have a very small amount, mostly the small map versions, from some non-New England lines; I will get these up in time.

B&M

YearMapDensityDistributionInterchange
1919NoAt LOCNoNo
1929
1930
1931		 No
No
Yes		 No
No
Top Bottom		 No
No
Yes		 Yes
1935 Yes Yes No Yes
1936 Yes Yes No Yes
1937 No Yes No Yes
1938 Yes Yes No Yes
1939 Yes No No Yes
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944		 Yes
Yes
No
No
Yes		 Yes
Yes
No
No
Yes		 Yes
No
No
No
No		 Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
1945 Yes Yes No Yes
1946NoNoNo Yes
1947NoNoNo Yes
1948NoNoNoNo
1949NoNoNo Yes
1950NoNoNo Yes
1951
1952		NoNoNo Yes
1953NoNoNoAt LOC
1954NoNoNoNo
1955NoNoNo Yes
1956NoNoNo Yes

Note: Partial Statistics data is located at the bottom of oversize B&M Density sheets.

CN

YearMapDensityDistributionInterchangeStatistics
1936NoAt LOCNoNoNo

CP

YearMapDensityDistributionInterchangeStatistics
1934 East
Lakes
Plains
West		 Yes No No No
1936 East
Lakes
Plains
West		 Yes No No Yes

CV

YearMapDensityDistributionInterchangeStatistics
1926 Yes Yes No Yes No
1934 Yes Yes No No No
1936 No At LOC Yes No No

MEC

YearMapDensityDistributionInterchangeStatistics
1919 No At LOC No No No
1925-6 No No No Yes (25-26) No
1930
1931		 Yes
Yes		 Yes (30-31) No Yes (30-31) No
1934
1935		 No
Yes		 No
Yes		 No Yes (34-35)
Yes		 No
1936
1937		 Yes
Yes		 Yes (36-37) No Yes
Yes		 No
1938 Yes Yes No Yes No
1939 Yes Yes No Yes No
1940 Yes Yes Yes Yes No
1941 Yes Yes No Yes No
1942 No No No Yes No
1943 No No No Yes No
1944 Yes Yes No Yes Yes
1945 Yes Yes No Yes No
1946 No No No Yes No
1947 No No No Yes No
1948 No No No No No
1949 No No No Yes No
1950 No No No Yes No
1951
1952 		No No No Yes (51-52) No
1953 No No No Yes No
1954 No No No Yes No
1955 No No No Yes No
1956 No No No Yes No

Note: for the MEC 1935 map and density table, versions for Year Ending June 1935 and Year Ending Dec 1935 are available. Other years are consistently Dec. I have only offered the Dec 1935 version above, but if you wish to have the June version, I can supply it.

NYNY&H

YearMapDensityDistributionInterchangeStatistics
1926 No Small No No No

Rutland

YearMapDensityDistributionInterchangeStatistics
1926 Yes Yes No No No
1934 No At LOC No Yes No

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Posted 3/30/25.  Updated 3/30/25.  Maintained by Earl Tuson