R7 Express...in Jenkintown?

Every morning my wife watches an "R7 Express" roll through Jenkintown, coming from West Trenton. I didn't believe her until I saw it myself one day. Is this an R3 that runs thru to CHW or Trenton rather than Elwyn? Why is it signed as an R7 on the inbound leg?

RDGAndrew wrote:Every morning my wife watches an "R7 Express" roll through Jenkintown, coming from West Trenton. I didn't believe her until I saw it myself one day. Is this an R3 that runs thru to CHW or Trenton rather than Elwyn? Why is it signed as an R7 on the inbound leg?

The R7 is chestnut hill east, which is on the Reading side making in not a candidate.

It could just be that it is set up that way for a later afternoon Trenton Express Run

Do you know the train number or at least the approximate time this train arrives? I have a copy of the master timetable from prior to the July schedule change. If its routing and movemrnts haven't changed, I can check it out.

If it's the train I think it is, it originates in Doylestown. Train 4711 expresses from Fort Washington to Market East, with its final destination in Trenton, NJ making local stops up the branch. Crews generally place the Trenton signs in from Doylestown to avoid having to change them again in Center City, and the express signs indicates that it is an inbound express.

Crews generally place the Trenton signs in from Doylestown to avoid having to change them again in Center City, and the express signs indicates that it is an inbound express.

...and just adds to the confusion of what the train you're riding is. With this policy, an inbound train from Warminster is actually a R1 Airport or a R2 Wilmington on it's run in to Center City. While the train is going to the Airport on the R2 Warminster branch, its actually a R1 Airport train. Very confusing system, especially if you're not familiar with the RR ops.

...and just adds to the confusion of what the train you're riding is.

Agreed. After conferring with my wife again to confirm the time and the fact that it comes in on the R3 side, and comparing PDF schedules online, it appears the mystery R7 express is train 6321, the Neshaminy Limited, rolling thru Jenkintown about 7:38.

Besides the train noted by whovian, the other AM expresses through Jenkintown are the R3 expresses which are limiteds and make no inbound stops below Bethayres. They are train numbers 4007, 6321 and 6325. The latter two run with push/pull equipment. Their times past Jenkintown would be roughly 7:10, 7:38 and 8:10 respectively. Their evening counterparts are train numbers 6374, 6378 and 6382, the first two of which use the push/pulls. There is nothing on the R7 timetable to indicate that these trains would run to Trenton after passing through CC.


Edit - sorry, looks like we posted at about the same time.

Edit - sorry, looks like we posted at about the same time.

No worries, Saturday mornings are prime railroad.net posting time!

The "mystery R7" is a solid Silverliner train, not P/P, so I might not have the time exactly right, but my wife did say it comes thru right before the 7:40 R2.

The train in question is 4711 from Doylestown. It has a consist of 6 MU's. Train #6321 terminates at 30th street and goes into Powelton Avenue Yard. The #6 in 6321 indicates that the train originates or terminates in Powelton ave, the #3 indicates the route, the #2 in insignificant, and the #1 indicates the direction of travel (odd indicates southbound, even indicates northbound. When a train number begins with a #4, as in train #4005, that indicates that the route changes in Center City. I can assure you that no push/pull set goes from West Trenton to Trenton in the am rush, unless its being used for training purposes after it completes it revenue service into Center City.
As I said before, 4711 originates in Doylestown as an express into Center City, local Doylestown to Fort Washington, then express into Market East. #4 indicates that the route changes in Center City, #7 indicates the route (Trenton), the last digit #1 indicates direction of travel. It may seem confusing to some, but if you are standing at Fort Washington station in the morning and your destination is Suburban Station, you see a southbound train with Trenton Express signs and you know the train HAS to operate through Center City to go to Trenton, you are still going to ride it.

whovian wrote:The train in question is 4711 from Doylestown. It has a consist of 6 MU's. Train #6321 goes terminates at 30th street and goes into Powelton Avenue Yard. The #6 in 6321 indicates that the train originates or terminates in Powelton ave, the #3 indicates the route, the #2 in insignificant, and the #1 indicates the direction of travel (odd indicates southbound, even indicates northbound. When a train number begins with a #4, as in train #4005, that indicates that the route changes in Center City.

Further elaboration: the digit in the hundreds place x0xx indicates the destination route, so when you have trains going back and forth between Warminster (R2) and Airport (R1), the trains to the airport will be 4100s and the trains to Warminster will be 4200s. All the 4100s will be odd-numbered and all the 4200s will be even.

And to complete the thousands info, 1xxx is a Saturday train, 2xxx is a Sunday train, 5xxx is a train originating or terminating at Fern Rock [was used a lot during RailWorks(NSM)], 6xxx originating or terminating at Powelton, 7xxx at Suburban Station, 8xxx at Market East, and 9xxx at Roberts Yard.

The thousands pertains to the train movement and not the passenger service. F'rinstance, a southbound train that runs in revenue service from Norristown to 30th Street and then deadheads to Bryn Mawr (0 in the hundreds place[*]) would be numbered 40xx, and not 66xx.

You'll see some trains with a 0 in the thousands place, such as 0211. This is done to distinguish SEPTA train number series from Amtrak train number series (particularly 100s, 200s, 400s, and 600s)

*--using a 0 instead of a 4 is interesting--as you know, the original tunnel operating plan had Bryn Mawr as one end of the R4, so you could just as well have made those Bryn Mawr trippers 400s.