Great Northern Railway Company - Minnesota 1937

Beautifully engraved RARE Specimen $10,000 Gold Bond Certificate from the Great Northern Railway Company dated 1937. This historic document was printed by American Bank Note Company and has an ornate border around it with a vignette of two steam locomotives going down the track. This item is over 69 years old.


Certificate Vignette

The Great Northern Railway (AAR reporting mark GN), running from St. Paul, Minnesota to Seattle, Washington — more than 1,700 miles (2,736 km) — was the privately-financed creation of the 19th century railroad tycoon James J. Hill and was developed from the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. The GN route was the most northern transcontinental railroad route in the United States and was north of the Northern Pacific route. The GN was a privately-funded transcontinental railroad, refusing federal government subsidies for construction (though some of its predecessor roads received land grants). The GN was the single transcontinental railroad avoiding receivership during the 1893-1897 depression.

The GN was built slowly to prolong exposure for local farmers, cattle drivers, lumberjacks, etc. Contests were held to promote interest in the railroad; J.J. Hill used early promotional incentives like feed and seed donations to farmers getting started along the line. Contests were all-inclusive, from largest farm animals to largest freight carload capacity.

The GN had branches that ran north to the Canadian border in Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana. It also had branches that ran to Superior, Wisconsin and Butte, Montana. The GN eventually grew to a system of over 8,000 track miles.

The GN mainline crossed the Mississippi River on the Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis, near the Saint Anthony Falls, the only waterfall on the Mississippi. The bridge ceased to be used as a railroad bridge in 1978 and is now used as a pedestrian river crossing with excellent views of the falls and of the lock system used to grant barges access up the river past the falls. The GN mainline reached Puget Sound at Seattle in 1893.

In 1931 the GN also developed its "Inside Gateway" route to California that rivaled Southern Pacific's route between Oregon and California. The GN route was further east than the SP route and ran south from the Columbia River in Oregon. The GN connected with the Western Pacific at Bieber, California; the Western Pacific connected with the Santa Fe Railroad in Stockton, California and together the three railroads (GN, WP, and ATSF) competed with Southern Pacific for traffic between the Pacific Northwest and Pacific Southwest.

In 1970 the GN became part of the Burlington Northern Railroad in a merger. The GN's routes are now owned by BNSF Railway, which uses paint schemes partly inspired by those of the GN.

History from Wikipeida and OldCompanyResearch.com.

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About Specimens

Specimen Certificates are actual certificates that have never been issued. They were usually kept by the printers in their permanent archives as their only example of a particular certificate. Sometimes you will see a hand stamp on the certificate that says "Do not remove from file".

Specimens were also used to show prospective clients different types of certificate designs that were available. Specimen certificates are usually much scarcer than issued certificates. In fact, many times they are the only way to get a certificate for a particular company because the issued certificates were redeemed and destroyed. In a few instances, Specimen certificates we made for a company but were never used because a different design was chosen by the company.

These certificates are normally stamped "Specimen" or they have small holes spelling the word specimen. Most of the time they don't have a serial number, or they have a serial number of 00000. This is an exciting sector of the hobby that grown in popularity over the past several years.