Railroads of Pennsylvania

by Treese, Lorett

  Rail Stories of the Region

  Pennsylvania’s System

  In January 1825, a Philadelphia town meeting that had been called to investigate building a canal between the Susquehanna and Allegheny Rivers dissolved in confusion when its attendees kept introducing other ideas. It did, however, prompt legislation, passed that spring, appointing canal commissioners charged with the objective of establishing “navigable communication between the eastern and western waters of the state and Lake Erie.”

  Philadelphia, which had once been the leading seaport on the Atlantic coast, was then facing serious competition from New York City and Baltimore. In 1817, New York had started building the Erie Canal, which would provide New York City with a water route to the Great Lakes and Midwest. The following year, Maryland completed its National Road between Baltimore and the Ohio River. Pennsylvania had a fairly decent turnpike between Philadelphia and Lancaster, but traveling west of the Susquehanna meant a tedious trek on primitive wagon roads like the Forbes Road and the Kittanning Path, which could take several weeks.

  In 1818, John Stevens, an avant-garde thinker who had scoffed at the Erie Canal, asked the Pennsylvania legislature to look into building a railroad between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. After this suggestion was regarded as too visionary, Stevens obtained a charter in 1823 to build a shorter railroad between Philadelphia and Columbia. Stevens made a rudimentary survey, but he encountered vigorous opposition from those who were unwilling to look beyond canals and was unable to raise sufficient investment capital to start building.

  Part of the problem was that few Americans had ever seen a railroad. Pennsylvanians tried to address this issue in 1824, by creating the Pennsylvania Society for the Promotion of Internal Improvements in the Commonwealth. In 1825, they resolved to send William Strickland, an architect and engineer, to Europe to study the various transportation systems being developed there and determine whether canals or railroads would be more cost-effective in the long run. In his monumental study of American transportation, J. Luther Ringwalt quoted some of the society’s formal directions to Strickland: “Of the utility of railways, and their importance as a means of transporting large burdens, we have full knowledge. Of the mode of constructing them, and their cost, nothing is known with certainty.”

  Pennsylvanians did know something about canals from those being built or already operating in the Commonwealth. The Conewago Canal on the Susquehanna River had been getting vessels around the Conewago Falls since 1797. Between 1821 and 1828, the Union Canal Company built a canal between Reading on the Schuylkill River and Portsmouth (now Middletown) on the Susquehanna. In 1825, the Schuylkill Navigation Company completed work on a canal designed to make the Schuylkill River navigable between Port Carbon and Philadelphia. Since the Schuylkill Canal joined the Union Canal in Reading, Pennsylvania had a rudimentary water route between Philadelphia and the Susquehanna.

  In 1826, Strickland published a report—today acknowledged as one of America’s first great engineering texts—highly recommending railroads. Nevertheless, Pennsylvania’s legislature voted in favor of a program of public improvements centering on a “Main Line Canal.” This evolved into a “Main Line of Public Works,” or “State Works,” through legislation signed by Pennsylvania’s governor on March 24, 1828, which also repealed John Stevens’s charter in favor of a state railroad linking Philadelphia and Columbia.

  Parts of Pennsylvania’s transportation system were operating as early as 1832, including canals between Columbia and Hollidaysburg and between Pittsburgh and Johnstown. In 1834, the Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad was completed and so was the Allegheny Portage Railroad, which addressed the problem of getting freight over the steep Allegheny Ridge. While the main line of the State Works was primarily intended to facilitate traffic flowing east and west, it was supplemented with other canals, including one that followed the Susquehanna from Duncan’s Island to Northumberland and others that followed the north and west branches of the same river.

  In recent years, a mystery has come to light regarding the construction of the Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad. In 1832, a crew of fifty-seven Irish immigrants was hired by contractor Philip Duffy to construct a feature called Duffy’s Cut west of what is now the town of Malvern. They died on the job, but no one knows exactly how. Scholars from two universities have recovered evidence and human remains suggesting murder. While research continues, a state historical marker was raised near the assumed site of the men’s mass grave. And, yes, there have been ghost sightings.

  Official opening day for the Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad fell on October 7, 1834. At 8:00 that morning, two trains left Columbia, carrying Pennsylvania governor George Wolf and various state officials and guests. Locomotives named the Lancaster and Columbia pulled the cars all day and finally brought them to Philadelphia around 6:00 in the evening. According to an account in a local newspaper, the Columbia Spy, reprinted in Hazard’s Register of Pennsylvania, they were “welcomed by a multitude of citizens” who were no less enthusiastic than the throng that had welcomed the trains to the depot in Lancaster.

  The trip was not without incident. The Columbia Spy briefly mentions an unfortunate accident that had taken the life of an old-timer identified only as “Lint.” After the first train had departed from Lancaster, this man stepped onto the tracks to watch it roll away. Because he was deaf, he never heard the second train coming. Nevertheless, the newspaper account ends on an optimistic note: “We have only time to express the confident belief which we entertain that, as in its incomplete state it has given glorious promise of repaying all the expense that has been lavished upon it, so when it gets into full operation, that promise will be bountifully performed.”

  The celebration was barely over when the weaknesses of Pennsylvania’s system became painfully apparent. The 82-mile railroad trip from Philadelphia to Columbia was followed by 172 miles by canal to the base of the Allegheny Mountains, 36 miles on inclined planes over the mountains, and 104 miles by canal to Pittsburgh. In good weather, the 394-mile journey took four and a half days. Both freight and passengers had to be transferred from one type of conveyance to another, creating logjams of traffic. The cost of maintaining the inclined planes was high, and the canals were subject to the inconveniences of ice in the winter, floods in the spring, and low water in the summer. Despite the optimism expressed at the festivities on opening day, it soon became clear that the State Works would never earn back the $18 million it had cost the Commonwealth, nor did its operations ever stand a chance of breaking even.

  Thomas Leiper’s Railroad—The Nation’s First?

  In earlier local histories, authors sometimes proudly claimed for Pennsylvania the first real railroad built in America. They were not referring to the Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad, but to a small workaday line built years earlier by Thomas Leiper outside of Philadelphia, south of the present towns of Swarthmore and Springfield, to carry stone from the Leiper quarries on Crum Creek to a landing on Ridley Creek. Various accounts state that operations started sometime between 1806 and 1810. This railroad had been designed by a civil engineer named John Thomson, who was coincidentally the father of J. Edgar Thomson, a man who became one of the most famous and influential presidents of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company.

  Before Leiper had this railroad constructed, he had taken the precaution of constructing a test railroad about sixty feet long in a vacant yard near the Bull’s Head Tavern in the Northern Liberties section of Philadelphia. Rails of oak were secured on stone blocks placed about eight feet apart. According to the history of Delaware County written by George Smith, published in 1862, many people gathered to witness the trial run of this contraption and placed wagers that no horse could pull a loaded carriage up a grade of one and a half inches to the yard. However, “the horse moved off with ease amid the plaudits of the assembled multitude,” and railroading got its start in America.

  The Philadelphia, Germantown & Norristown Railroad

  By the
1830s, Germantown, once the site of the country estates of wealthy Philadelphians, had become a peaceful village populated by merchants whose business took them regularly to Philadelphia. Edward H. Bonsall became the chief promoter for an independent railroad that would carry these early commuters between Philadelphia, Germantown, and eventually Norristown.

  Chartered in 1831, the railroad began operations the following year. In an article about opening day printed in the U.S. Gazette, reprinted in Hazard’s Register of Pennsylvania, Bonsall reported that thousands flocked to the depot on Buttonwood Street in Penn Township to admire “the splendid cars, which were placed in file along the track.” At 12:15, the cars began to move, but “some slight difficulties were experienced, owing to the horses not being used to the employment.” They reached Germantown by 1:00 in the afternoon. After some speeches, the passengers repaired to Mrs. Heft’s tavern for a “sumptuous repast.” At 3:30, the cars made their return trip. The following day, the railroad began its regular schedule of six round-trips daily at a cost of 25 cents each way. Germantown became the city’s first true railroad commuter suburb.

  The depot for the Philadelphia, Germantown & Norristown Railroad as it appeared in Eli Bowen’s 1852 The Pictorial Sketch-book of Pennsylvania.

  A second article, published in The Pennsylvanian in 1835, told of the August opening of the line to Norristown. Two hundred to three hundred passengers left Philadelphia and arrived in Norristown in less than an hour and fifteen minutes. There they celebrated with an outdoor dinner under a tent. At 4:00, the cars returned, while “thousands of cheerful faces smiled, and hundreds of well-turned ankles were moving in harmony to the band of music on the cars.” The road from Manayunk to Norristown was no doubt the most scenic portion of the line, for it ran along the bank of the Schuylkill River. The article also described the gardens, mansions, and luxuriant grain fields the train passed. The opening-day voyage arrived back in Philadelphia at 6:00 that evening, where its participants offered a toast: “Success and prosperity to the president and managers of the Philadelphia & Norristown Railroad!”

  The West Chester Railroad—The First Branch Railroad?

  During the 1830s, while construction of the State Works was still under way, Dr. William Darlington, chairman of the West Chester Railroad Committee, wrote to a member of the Pennsylvania state senate, proposing to build one of the nation’s earliest branch railroads. Darlington noted, “The thriving condition of our Town, the fertility of the surrounding country, and the productive industry of the people, all induce us to believe that a branch railway to intersect the Pennsylvania road, will be of inestimable value to all concerned; and we have been highly gratified on finding that nature has not denied us a chance of participating in the advantages to result from the grand scheme of Internal Improvements.”

  By 1832, nine miles of track had been constructed linking West Chester, the county seat of Chester County, to the Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad at a place that would one day be called Malvern but was then simply known as “The Intersection.” The first train to travel from Philadelphia arrived in West Chester on Christmas Day 1833. Horses pulled the carriages until steam locomotives were introduced in 1845. As early as 1835, the company had its own passenger station and inn on Broad Street, below Race Street.

  In order to make the commute between West Chester and Philadelphia even more convenient, and perhaps to free the West Chester Railroad from dependence on another line, professional men favoring a “direct railroad” from West Chester to Philadelphia via Media in Delaware County formed a company in 1847. The new railroad opened in 1858, and the old line became part of the Pennsylvania Railroad system.

  The connection with Philadelphia, so astutely made by early boosters, meant that in the later part of the nineteenth century, West Chester could and did promote itself as a residential alternative to Philadelphia Main Line communities like Haverford and Bryn Mawr.

  It was a great day for West Chester when their branch railroad linked the rural town to Philadelphia. This photo of the railroad’s trains appeared in History of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company by William Bender Wilson.

  The Philadelphia and Western Railroad

  Originally incorporated as the Philadelphia and Western Railway in 1902, the P&W was a high-speed electric railroad. It was not a trolley; the P&W was a standard-gauge double-track railroad with a dedicated roadbed. It was powered by a third-rail system that did not require overhead lines. Its own generating stations originally supplied its power.

  The “Western” in its name may have referred to points much farther west than the Philadelphia suburbs. The railroad was intended to extend to Parkesburg, offering direct competition to the Pennsy’s main line. Parkesburg was also only forty miles from York, a terminus of the Gould family amalgamation of railroads that they hoped to build into a transcontinental line. Pennsy executives were suspicious from the start that the P&W was secretly under Gould family control.

  P&W management decided to build and open the railroad in phases. Its first train ran from a new station at Sixty-ninth Street just outside Philadelphia to the town of Strafford in 1907. Several months later, the railroad defaulted on some bonds and had to be reorganized, the first of many financial troubles that plagued its early history.

  The essential problem was low ridership. P&W president Thomas Newhall gave up on westward construction and instead extended the tracks to the Pennsy’s nearby Strafford station, adding facilities that made it easy to transfer from one railroad to the other. In 1912, the P&W constructed a branch from its Villanova station enabling trains to run from Sixty-ninth Street to Norristown. This required the construction of deep cuts and viaducts over suburban roads, but it became the railroad’s new main line and an instant success that saved the railroad.

  Until 1951, riders could connect at Norristown with another interurban railroad called Lehigh Valley Transit and ride as far as Allentown. At Sixty-ninth Street, they could board the Market Street Elevated line, which had opened in 1907 and could transport them to the commercial heart of Philadelphia as well as the ferries that crossed the Delaware River.

  Since there had been big plans for the P&W at its inception, the railroad had a charter that permitted it to carry freight as well as passengers. The extension to the PRR Strafford station made it possible to interchange freight cars with the Pennsy. Sidings along the P&W line allowed it to serve a quarry, an ice plant, an oil company, and the Merion Golf Club, which required regular shipments of sand and fertilizer.

  After World War II, private automobiles became popular with Philadelphia’s wealthy suburban population, and the construction of the Schuylkill Expressway gave them high-speed access to the city. In 1954, the P&W was purchased by the Philadelphia Suburban Transportation Company, commonly known as the Red Arrow Lines, the name of its bus operations. The trains between Sixty-ninth Street and Norristown continued to run when the system was merged into SEPTA, and light-rail vehicles still operate today on what is now known as the Norristown High Speed Line.

  In 1989, SEPTA replaced the P&W’s old Norristown terminal with the Norristown Transportation Center, linking the Norristown High Speed Line with the Manayunk Norristown Regional Rail Line and a number of suburban bus routes. The Sixty-ninth Street terminal continues to be a major transportation hub linking the old P&W with two trolleys and many other bus lines. Passengers can still walk right off the old P&W and onto the Market Street El.

  The Baldwin Locomotive Works

  By 1832, the Philadelphia, Germantown & Norristown Railroad decided it was time to retire the horses that pulled its cars and turn to high-tech steam locomotives. PG&N contacted Matthias William Baldwin, whose firm manufactured machinery, including stationary steam engines, and who had also constructed a working scale model of a steam locomotive for Franklin Peale, the manager of a Philadelphia museum. In Baldwin’s shop in Lodge Alley, between Seventh and Eighth Streets, Old Ironsides was constructed, and a locomotive empire was born.

  By 18
35, Baldwin was making enough locomotives to warrant a move to Broad and Hamilton Streets, where his firm stayed for nearly a century, occupying more than seven city blocks in a busy industrial district. The Philadelphia & Reading Railroad purchased Baldwin locomotives, and so did the Pennsylvania Railroad, whose president, J. Edgar Thomson, became a great friend of Matthias Baldwin.

  In an article in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Malcolm C. Clark says, “Before his [Matthias Baldwin’s] death in 1866, the railroads were to purchase 1,500 engines which bore his name. For his persistence and skills, Baldwin reaped a generous reward as the founder of Philadelphia’s famous enterprise.”

  The vast operations of the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia, as depicted for Philadelphia and Its Environs.

  In 1906, Baldwin Locomotive works opened a plant south of Philadelphia in Eddystone, and by 1928, all Baldwin operations were located there until the company ceased production in 1956. The old headquarters building still stands and now serves as an office building.

  What’s Left of Conrail

  No one wanted to buy the bankrupt Penn Central, so in 1976, Congress stepped in to create the Consolidated Rail Corporation, or Conrail. Conrail was conceived as a private, for-profit freight railroad consisting of the remains of six railroads, most of which had played a part in Pennsylvania’s railroad history. Besides the Penn Central, Conrail included the Central Railroad of New Jersey, the Lehigh Valley Railroad, the Reading Company, the Erie Lackawanna Railroad, and the Lehigh & Hudson River Railroad.

  In 1980, as Conrail continued to lose money, Congress passed the Staggers Rail Act, which deregulated railroads to some degree, enabling them to behave in a more competitive fashion when it came to issues like abandonments and rate setting. Within two years, Conrail was making a small profit. The Northeast Rail Service Act stipulated that Conrail be returned to the private sector when it was once again profitable, and by 1985, bids were coming in. Conrail was ultimately sold to the public in 1987 through what was at that time America’s largest initial public stock offering.