Re: Porter drawings, etc. *LINK* *PIC*

At the California State Railway Museum they have copies of the microfilm reels of H.K. Porter drawings (and order forms). At least a couple of years ago you could visit their library and saerch through their archives.
Acording to their website:
[www.csrmf.org]
"The California State Railroad Museum Library provides public access to the Museum’s documentary collections. The Library is located adjacent to the Museum of Railroad History on the second floor of the Big Four Building at 111 “I” Street. The reading room is open to the public without charge Tuesday through Saturday from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. Library collections do not circulate and are to be used only in the reading room."
They have microfilm viewing equipement and you can also make hard copies of the films (at least the copy machine used to make only Letter size copies, so you need several copies for larger drawings).
The microfilms are not clasified, so especially finding something else than elevation drawings will require lots of time! I think I spent around 5 to 6 Saturdays to go through all the reels and still there were some drawings I could not find. I hope someone would sometimes make all the effort needed and write an index of all those drawings. Sadly they seem to be photographed in quite random order (they do not go by order of the Porter card #).
The museum is very well located especially if you come from the Bay Area (you can even get there by train!). They also have nice lunch places just around the corner and the museum is well worth of visit.
I could only get the elevation drawings and build sheets from Canada as they told it requires too much work to look for any other drawings. When searching for drawings it is a good idea to look at first for the build sheet and elevation drawings, which list the standard parts or card numbers of drawings used to build up a locomotive.
The collection of Porter drawings is quite compelete. I could find elevation drawings of our H.K.Porter ÄSR #1 (2313/1901) and its sister engine from 1900 and also the two original porter locomotives of Jokioinen railway from 1898. The newest elevation drawings were of the modern H.K. Porter diesels built at the end of 1940s.
-Jussi