Bruce Young was for many years the Treasurer of the Photographic Historical Society of the Western Reserve and an early member of the Northern Ohio Association of Railroad Societies. An avid collector of vintage Cleveland photographs, Bruce acquired a number of collections from retired news photographers and purchased other photo collections at estate sales, so as to preserve them for posterity. Bruce gathered a considerable collection of prints, negatives and slides, especially shots of railroads, streetcars, and interurbans. He developed a business of reprinting many of the better images in his collection, offering them for sale at shopping malls around greater Cleveland.

A retired school teacher, Bruce was a big supporter of the work being done with railroad archives by the CSU Library's Special Collections area. Upon his death in the fall of 2003, he willed his college of tens of thousands of images and his railroad literature to Special Collections. As his donation is processed, the material will be available for use by students, scholars and the general public. Select images will be digitized and added to the Cleveland Memory Project, where they will be available for enjoyment and use around the world.