The material in this series includes historical sketches, correspondence, reports, maps, drawings, photographs, publicity materials, and miscellaneous papers containing historical data. These records are organized into a few broad groups: general corporate historical sketches and data, materials relating to corporate financing, and materials relating to corporate subsidiaries.

Many of these materials emanated from the Comptroller's Office, but all were integrated into a single series under the Secretary's Office, since that department seemed to be their most logical resting place.

These minute books are alternate versions of the directors' and stockholders' minutes kept by the company's New York office. One of the indexes is for the volume of directors' minutes contained in this series. The other index refers to a minute book not held by the Minnesota Historical Society.

The series consists of 21 ring binders containing a consolidated alphabetical index to the consolidated directors', stockholders', and executive committee minutes of the Great Northern Railway. They refer only to volumes 6-24; minute books 1-5 have self-contained indexes. The last volume in the sequence indexes minute book volume 24 only.

This series consists of the ribbon copies of the corporate minutes of the meetings of the directors, stockholders, and executive committee. The minutes are filed in a single chronological sequence without regard the creating entity. Executive committee minutes do not begin until October 1912, the date of the committee's formation. Volume numbers were assigned by the railway.

The sub-records of the Great Northern executive committee were begun at the time the committee was organized in October 1912, and carry on through almost to the 1970 merger. They are a valuable source of summary information on the business of the company at any particular time.

The sub-records consist of all the attachments and inclusions to the executive committee minutes. They contain all the supporting documents referenced in the minutes, but not contained therein. Included among these are weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual financial statements (cash, earnings, costs), operating statements, contracts and deeds, resolutions, approved AFEs lists, periodic lists of records destroyed, periodic business summaries and other narrative reports, letters and memos from or to the committee, and income forecasts (especially in later years).

Beginning in the 1930s, committee meetings become decreasingly frequent, and the content of the sub-records become less rich and varied. Content becomes dominated by financial statements, income forecasts, and major contracts and legal documents.

The volumes are in scrapbook form, with the documents pasted into them in order of meeting date.

Narrative minutes summarize matters that were informally discussed and, therefore, document the committee's consideration of matters that probably are not recorded in the formal minutes. Some of the meetings, themselves, may not have been formally called.

These minutes document the work of the internal Great Northern committee charged with effecting efficient consolidation with the other roads with which Great Northern expected to merge: the Northern Pacific; Chicago, Burlington & Quincy; and the Spokane, Portland and Seattle. Each of those roads had its own internal committee, as well, and the members of these internal committees formed a Joint Consolidation Committee with over-arching responsibility for creating an effective consolidation. The Great Northern consolidation committee saw that Great Northern's interests were represented during this long process.

These minutes document the work of the executive-level committee that acted as overseer of the Great Northern corporate pension fund.

The maps were removed from the annual reports and have been flat-filed separately. Each map indicates extant company trackage with colored line drawings. The year of its creation is noted on the back of each map.

Only the maps in folder 1 are open to the public. The remaining maps, contained within folder 2, are in poor physical condition and are closed to general use. They are, however, included in the microfilm version of the annual reports as are the maps in folder 1.

Formal principles of organization governing transaction of business within the company. The code, revised periodically, defines the basic chain of command and summarizes the responsibilities of each main operating entity within the corporate hierarchy.