Stockholder and board of director minutes document monthly meeting proceedings, correspondence, agreements with other companies, budgets, newspaper clippings, and company histories. Stockholder meeting minutes include decisions by the board of directors and lists of stockholders and their number of shares in the company. Board of director meeting minutes include information on railroad acquisition, expansion of rail infrastructure, and contracts. These records also include minutes of executives, incorporators, special, and pool committee meeting minutes. Executive meeting minutes reveal discussions on day-to-day operations of the company and election results of board members. Incorporator meeting minutes include information on how the company established and operated new railroad companies. Pool and special committee minutes detail the proceedings of committees that determine stock majorities within other railroad companies in which they owned shares.

Annual reports and account books detail the yearly operational and financial condition of predecessor railroads. Annual reports include a list of company officers, earnings and expenses, and balance sheets. Also included are reports from company officers including the president, treasurers, chief engineer, and superintendents, as well as company audits. Some annual reports of predecessors include the proceedings of stockholder meetings, and annual reports of their subsidiaries. For example, in the 1889 annual report of Richmond and West Point Terminal and Warehouse Company, reports of East Tennessee, Viginia, and Georgia and Central of Georgia are included.

Subject files contain correspondence, deeds, agreements, legal cases, company history, meeting proceedings of the board of directors and stockholders, annual reports, balance statements and budgets, construction plans, publications and newspaper articles, rail passes, time schedules, awards, and fare tickets and scrips (money). Some subject files include documentation of exploitation of leased convicts and enslaved people by predecessor railroads. Documents include Georgia Pacific Railroad’s leasing of labor from the Mississippi Penitentiary from 1881-1882, as well as leased labor from unknown county jails in Alabama. Within Western North Carolina Railroad’s records is an 1885 renewal agreement to continue using leased convict labor from the North Carolina State Penitentiary. Their agreement with the North Carolina State Penitentiary was to use the leased convict labor to complete a line of road on the Asheville and Spartanburg Railroad, between the towns of Asheville and Hendersonville, North Carolina. Also included are Mobile and Ohio Railroad’s 1858 and 1861 payrolls listing the names of enslaved people for road repairs. These payrolls contain the names of people hired by the railroad, the names of enslaved people, and their enslavers.