H. (Hiram?) L. Marvin was a railroad engineer in the late 19th-early 20th centuries. The collection contains professional correspondence regarding railorad construction and some personal correspondence, as well as photographs of various bridges and railways in Kansas during the late 1800s and early part of the 1900s.

Eight black and white photographs of railroad crossings and a brochure from the Atchison, Kansas-based Locomotive Finished Material Company about "The Universal Permanent Highway Crossing."

Transfers patent for "excavating and ditching machine" from Barnas T. Stowell, Adams Co., Illinois, to Samuel Mallett & Co. for use in constructing railroads from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean.