Other model railroad clubs listed on the Green Sheet include the Abington Lines Model Railroad Club, Chelten Hills Model Railroad Club, GATSME Model Railroad Club (in Fort Washington), and Royersford Modular Model Railroaders.
One place that’s not on the Green Sheet is the Lehigh & Keystone Model Railroad Museum, located in a relatively nondescript building on Linden Street in Bethlehem. The layout here duplicates fairly accurately the paths of the Lehigh Valley and Reading Railroads from New Jersey through the Lehigh Valley to Reading, with replicas of the passenger stations in Easton and Bethlehem and the operations of Bethlehem Steel. The museum is open to the public one day per month, with additional hours in December when Bethlehem becomes “Christmas City.”
Lorett Treese Travels
The newsletter we got from the Philadelphia Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society early in 2011 alerted us to what promised to be a unique passenger excursion opportunity: an all-day round-trip between West Chester and Lansdale on the West Chester Railroad in cooperation with SEPTA and the Rotary Club of North Penn. The date coincided with an annual event called Lansdale Day, during which the arrival of a special train would constitute one of the events. We purchased tickets online and left the house early.
When we arrived at the railroad’s grassy parking area, we discovered that this trip apparently had attracted a large number of diehard railfans. The parking lot was nearly full but it was only 8:20 A.M., forty minutes before boarding time. People were unloading some serious photography equipment. We overheard one guy say he had driven in from Mechanicsburg, about a hundred miles distant, for this ride. There were not too many children among the passengers, but we overheard another man explain that he was treating the youngsters he had in tow to their very first train ride. And about half the people waiting to board were wearing some sort of railfan memento, such as a railroad-related T-shirt, polo shirt, cap, or pin.
This trip would be unique in that it would bring passenger cars once used by the Reading Company back onto former Reading tracks. The West Chester Railroad uses vintage Reading Blueliner coaches built in Wilmington, Delaware, in the 1930s, which indeed might once have served the Lansdale station. Following their Reading Company service, the same cars were used by SEPTA until 1990. There were five passenger cars in all, three painted Tuscan red, one dark green, and one green and cream. Since the trip was being made in cooperation with SEPTA, we had SEPTA crew members on board conferring from time to time with the West Chester Railroad crew members. However, the West Chester crew was much more nattily attired, with hats identifying their positions as trainman, brakeman, or conductor. Our West Chester conductor even wore a vest draped with a traditional watch chain.
A blast of the diesel horn marked our pretty much on-time departure. Those who had never ridden this railroad before remarked on the train’s lurch and sway, but a West Chester Railroad crew member said, “We’ll soon be on commuter rails and smooth tracks, so enjoy the bumps while you can.” We passed through West Chester Railroad’s train yard and went by a number of other locomotives at rest. Some freight cars sat in the yard, but no passenger cars, since every passenger car that the railroad possessed was being used on the train we were riding.
We passed beneath Route 202 and entered a wooded area, where we rode parallel to a little stream known locally as Goose Creek. We passed the Westtown Station, which now functions as a shop selling pottery, the little station at Cheyney, and a waiting shelter at Locksley. At Glen Mills, normally the end of the line for the West Chester Railroad, we spotted a picnic grove and the Pig Out barbecue restaurant, the destination for the railroad’s summer picnic specials, and what they call the BBQ Choo Choo, which runs on selected Saturday evenings.
In the vicinity of a quarry where Amtrak runs freight trains to pick up ballast for Amtrak tracks, we paused while a barrier was removed and SEPTA formally allowed our train to enter its system. We proceeded very slowly through Wawa, where SEPTA was in the process of building tracks and a station that would enable it to extend the Media–Elwyn line to this point. We were also switching from the remains of one historic railroad to another. Up to this point, we had been riding on the old West Chester Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad, but now we were moving to the tracks of what had once been the Philadelphia and Baltimore Central Railroad to ride the rest of the way to Philadelphia.
After a scheduled stop at the Elwyn station, we sped up and passed the stations at Media, Wallingford, and Swarthmore. We were passing SEPTA trains now and were traveling at commuter rail speeds. We saw some jaw-dropped amazement on the faces of people waiting for their trains. Everyone is accustomed to seeing trains on these tracks, but not this train, with its diesel engines and vintage passenger cars.
We passed row homes in West Philadelphia and the University City Station, and soon we were rolling into Thirtieth Street Station. Here we all got off for a forty-five-minute layover. One of our West Chester Railroad locomotives was too tall for the catenary wires in the tunnel ahead, so it had to be switched out for another locomotive. This was also a welcome pit stop, since we had been on a train without restrooms for about two hours. Prior to leaving Thirtieth Street Station, our train, with its new Big Blue Conrail locomotive, made a photo op run on track six, then retreated to track five for boarding. We had to show our conductor our wrist bands to get back on our train.
After repeated warnings about the clearances and the need to extend absolutely nothing outside the open windows, we proceeded slowly through the tunnel to Suburban Station and Market East Station. The waiting commuters were more blasé here, barely looking up from their electronic devices. We then traveled through another tunnel long enough for the smoke from our diesel engines to let us know why SEPTA does not generally send diesel locomotives through here.
Finally we saw daylight and made history. Our SEPTA conductor proudly announced, “Welcome to the Reading Railroad, folks! This is the first time for West Chester through the tunnel! The first time for West Chester on the Reading tracks!” Indeed, we were on the former Reading line that would take us to Lansdale, at which point trains formerly continued to Bethlehem or took a branch line to Doylestown. In modern SEPTA terms, we were now on the Lansdale–Doylestown Line.
After clearing Temple University and North Philadelphia, we were back in the ’burbs and back to commuter speeds as we roared past SEPTA stations. Near Ambler, my husband spotted a large dog that looked like a husky with its snout raised heavenward, howling back at our diesel horn. We stopped just outside Lansdale, and our SEPTA conductor explained that the Powers That Be were deciding which track to take us in on. We glided slowly into town, where we passengers were made to feel like visiting royalty. Hundreds of people awaited us, cheering for us and taking our pictures. I watched several versions of our train arriving in Lansdale on YouTube the next day.
Making railfan history—a West Chester Railroad train parked in Lansdale on Lansdale Day in 2011.
During our trip, I had noticed a few railfan photographers who had set up photo equipment at vantage points along the way, such as in the parking area near the Cheyney Station, but it became clear during the trip that most of the region’s railfan photographers were fellow passengers on the train. Besides the photo opportunity at Thirtieth Street Station, we made another photo op stop on the way to Lansdale and no less than four stops on the way back, plus an additional photo run-by in SEPTA’s “no-man’s-land” between the current end of the Media–Elwyn line and the terminus of the West Chester Railroad’s tracks. In every case, at least half the passengers got off to take pictures. Now, I like taking pictures of trains as much as the next rail fan, but I’m blaming all those stops on the way home for making us over an hour late arriving in West Chester.
We knew in advance that Lansdale Day would populate the town with more than 175 vendors offering food, entertainment, and merchandise. However, since our train had arrived too late for us to witness the judging of the Little Miss Lansdale contest and we were not
particularly interested in the petting zoo, we decided to skip most of the attractions. I had searched the Internet for a place where we could pleasantly kill our two-and-a-half-hour layover, and my research paid off big time. At Ristorante Toscano at 213 North Broad Street, we had a delightful leisurely lunch with some of the finest Bolognese sauce we had ever tasted. Having been forewarned that the restaurant was BYO, we had come supplied with wine, but the friendly owner offered some of the restaurant’s own wine, which was homemade. “Homemade?” I inquired. “Where do you make it?”
“In the cellar,” he answered. “Where else would you make wine?”
The Region’s Rail-Trails
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Pennsylvania began to experience a new trend: railroad abandonments. In northwest Pennsylvania, where petroleum had first been commercially drilled, railroads were abandoned as soon as better sources of oil were discovered in other states and foreign countries. Other railroads built to serve the logging industry were abandoned as Pennsylvania’s northern forests were depleted. Even more railroads were abandoned in the years following World War II, as travelers and shippers increasingly turned to the highways and Americans began turning to fuel sources other than Pennsylvania’s anthracite and bituminous coal.
Out of the Midwest, another region with a lot of abandoned railroads, came the notion of preserving railroad corridors while removing the tracks so that railroad beds could function as trails for walking, jogging, bicycling, or other recreational uses. The National Trails System Act of 1983 allowed these corridors to be “railbanked,” or used as trails while they were also being preserved for possible reclamation for rail transportation at some future date. The nonprofit Rails-to-Trails Conservancy was formed in 1986 to provide assistance for local rail-trail conversion efforts.
Today Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) provides grants under its Rails-to-Trails program to help nonprofit organizations develop local trails. Pennsylvania is currently the nation’s leader in rail-trails, with 146 open trails over 1,413 miles of former railroad. The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy maintains a website, www.traillink.com, that allows users to locate rail-trails by state and link to information about parking and trail access. Users can also post reviews and photos and download trail maps.
In Chester County, the Struble Trail begins just north of Downingtown. Its suburban location means that it gets a lot of use from families, particularly on weekends and holidays. It runs parallel to the east branch of the Brandywine, and for much of its open length, it is a shaded gravel lane, very easy to negotiate, offering glimpses of the river as well as access points where users and their canine companions can take a dip. Like many of the Commonwealth’s rail-trails, the Struble Trail is considered a work in progress. When complete, it will extend sixteen miles through central Chester County, passing near Springton Manor, a quiet model farm preserved to educate the public about the county’s agricultural past.
The Schuylkill River Trail will eventually extend 130 miles from the city of Philadelphia to Pottsville. Since the Schuylkill River Trail is so long, it was built and managed by the different organizations and municipalities that currently constitute the Schuylkill River Trail Council. The most heavily used segment is a 20.5-mile stretch from Philadelphia to Valley Forge National Historical Park, which incorporates a former railbed through Montgomery County. Among the trails with which the Schuylkill River Trail is designed to connect is the Perkiomen Trail, which stretches north along a former Reading branch 19 miles to the pleasant Green Lane Park. The trail parallels the Perkiomen Creek and is a very scenic route.
Planning for the Chester Valley Trail, which is supposed to extend from Downingtown to Norristown, where it will connect with the Schuylkill River Trail and the Perkiomen Trail, began in 1991. In 1997, the Chester County Parks and Recreation Department obtained rights for the development of an old Conrail line running parallel to Route 30, or Lancaster Avenue. Construction began in 2002, but the project is still in the planning and development stages. Three separate sections are currently open for use. Parts of the trail between Frazer and Exton are unpaved and little changed from the time when they served as railbeds.
In 2005, after much discussion and argument, the Radnor Trail finally opened along part of the old Strafford branch of the Philadelphia and Western (P&W) Railroad. What’s interesting about this relatively short, 2.4-mile trail, which is very popular with dog walkers, is that a local township historical society is working with other groups to provide signage interpreting the former electric railroad. The trail provides a good view of the P&W’s Ithan Substation, which was abandoned by the railroad when it began purchasing electric power rather than generating its own. Thomas Newhall, who had been a president of the P&W, converted this substation into a private club with a squash court where he also displayed his gun collection. The substation became the scene of his death when he shot himself there in 1947 following the death of his wife.
The Schuylkill River Trail near Valley Forge.
The Radnor Trail and the old powerhouse of the Philadelphia and Western Railway.
The D&L Trail, also called Lehigh Canal South, stretches from Allentown east to where the Lehigh River enters the Delaware, for the most part on the north shore of the Lehigh. It runs parallel to a great deal of railroad track, but for most of its length, vegetation blocks the view of moving freight trains. In Bethlehem, trail users can see the rail yard currently in use as well as the melancholy ruins of Bethlehem Steel.
The region’s other rail-trails include the Nor-Bath Trail, Forks Township Recreation Trail, Plainfield Township Trail, and Bristol Spurline Park.
SECTION TWO
Dutch Country
Great and Growing Railways of the Region
The Western Maryland
Although major Pennsylvania railroad systems eventually served this region’s counties on both sides of the lower Susquehanna, its residents remained equally familiar with and dependent on the Western Maryland Railway (WM). The Western Maryland’s tracks remained just below the Mason-Dixon line through much of the nineteenth century, but the railroad eventually entered the Commonwealth, where for a time it served as an intermediate link in a multirailroad route connecting New York, New England, and the Midwest.
The Maryland General Assembly granted the entity that would become the Western Maryland Railway a charter in 1852. Its objective was to compete for the trade of the Cumberland Valley with Pennsylvania’s Cumberland Valley Railroad. Despite the publication of promotional materials proclaiming what an asset such a line could be, Harold A. Williams explains in his centennial history of the Western Maryland that financial difficulties impeded construction and delayed the railroad’s formal opening until 1859.
Though it then ran only from the outskirts of Baltimore to Westminster, Maryland, the WM first became part of Pennsylvania’s railroad history in 1863, when its trains moved troops and supplies toward Gettysburg (just nineteen miles from Westminster) and survivors, prisoners, and victims’ bodies out of the area after the Civil War’s most pivotal battle. In fact, the federal government actually took military possession of the Western Maryland for six days, making it part of the network of railroads that gave the Union a considerable advantage over the Confederacy. During that time, its cars moved neither passengers nor freight that was not in the service of the army. The government’s takeover was actually very welcome, because federal reimbursement for the railroad’s services made up for poor sales of its stock and loss of business that had been caused by threats of Confederate raids ever since the war began.
The WM also transported a number of notable people associated with the battle of Gettysburg, including the mortal remains of Maj. Gen. John F. Reynolds, who had been killed in action, and President Abraham Lincoln when he visited Gettysburg several months later. Lincoln actually traveled via three contemporary railroads to reach Gettysburg from Washington, D.C., including the Northern Central Railway
, the Hanover Branch Railroad, and the Gettysburg Railroad. The last two lines were later incorporated into the Western Maryland system.
After the war, the Western Maryland continued the construction work that took its tracks steadily west. Its trains finally crossed into Pennsylvania when the railroad purchased land just north of the Mason-Dixon line in order to follow the route that would best address the topographical challenge of the Blue Ridge Mountains. On this piece of real estate, the Western Maryland built a park called Pen-Mar and its own railroad hotel, the Blue Mountain House, in 1883. Sometimes called the “Coney Island of the Mountains,” the Pen-Mar amusement park successfully developed passenger and excursion business for the Western Maryland, which up to that time had carried mainly freight. Most of the guests hailed from Baltimore, not Pennsylvania. Well after the Blue Mountain House was destroyed by fire in 1913 and Pen-Mar closed in 1943, people still reminisced about the hotel’s celebrated chicken dinners, the comfortable rocking chairs on its porch, and the fine buffet-parlor-observation cars that delivered them to the park.
The WM saw further expansion around 1902, when George Jay Gould proposed that it become part of the transcontinental railroad empire that he was trying to create by stringing together existing railroads to link the Midwest with Baltimore and create a serious competitor to the Pennsy. Gould’s efforts failed, and the Western Maryland went into receivership in 1908, but not before a number of important physical improvements had been made, including an extension to Cumberland, Maryland.
Railroads of Pennsylvania Page 8