The Minnesota Railroad Research Project is a group of friends who are endeavoring to locate every common carrier railroad station that has ever existed in the state of Minnesota. In addition, we are also attempting to document a genealogy of each station as well. A station is defined as a point shown on a railroad timetable, in comparison to a depot, which is generally some sort of structure located at a station.
Stations can exist without depots, and many do.
Depots generally do not exist unless a station also exists. Railroads excluded from our research are street railways, unless they are involved in common carrier operations. Also excluded are logging railways, unless they are involved in common carrier operations. We go on to break all of our own rules and do include the railroads built by Reserve Mining and Erie Mining to haul taconite ore even though they are not, and has never been, a common carrier railroads, we decided to include this road. Probably because of the F-units and Alcos that still ply their mainlines.