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Yes, the Wilmington & Reading, subsequently Wilmington & Northern, was an independent operation until 1898, when the Reading bought up a controlling stock interest. I believe RL&HS Bulletin #118 has a complete roster (looks like mostly 4-4-0s with some 0-4-0s and 0-6-0s for switching, ac...

It was developed by William Churchill of Corning Glass in the early 1900s: https://www.jonroma.net/media/signaling/railway-signaling/1949/A%20Century%20of%20Signal%20Glass%20Developments.pdf He was looking to make a standard set of colored glasses that would not be confused, even at varying levels o...

CR 60th St. I.T., formerly parts of the PRR 60th St Branch and Chester & Philadelphia Branch. Both were built in 1917-18, to serve wartime industry along the Delaware, especially the (boondoggle) shipyard on Hog Island, but were relocated on a regular basis when the airport was built and expande...

Thanks for that first-hand report, rhallock. I see West Point does have a hunting access program which could theoretically get someone into that part of the reservation (which I imagine explains how the existence of the tunnel was reported here: https://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~sws/fun/runtales/sk.shtm...

No. The poles were there to carry high-voltage lines (I think for PECO rather than the railroad), although presumably they could have been converted to catenary supports had it ever been needed. This was also the case on the Kensington & Tacony Branch and part of the Newtown Square Branch.

OK, I've been working this out myself with the aid of the NYS 1-m DEM, and I think I have things sorted out at last. (Looking at the current OSM relations, I think I did this before, and forgot...) The original Sunk Mine Railroad, or West Point Railroad as it's called in the 1868 Beers Atlas, began ...

Just west of where Bull Pond Road meets 293, there's an access road on the south side (on West Point land) which appears to be built on the little bit of ROW that was graded: it is pointed at what appears to be a curving cut, now occupied by a stream, on the east approach to the tunnel. Collectively...

The line east of Newfoundland was NYS&W's Macopin Lake Railroad, which existed principally to haul ice from Macopin Lake (now Echo Lake). I don't think there was a switchback junction in the area, but the main line and the junction with the Wharton & Northern had to be relocated due to reser...

That's the PRR's Schuylkill Branch, not the Allentown Railroad. I vaguely recall that the P&R's ownership of the right-of-way came into play when the PRR was surveying through there, but I don't remember details or have maps.

Railpace covered the New Holland Secondary in the March 2017 issue. I believe New Holland no longer ships by rail.

Kurt Bell, the longtime head of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, transferred out there some years ago, and since then they've had a great reputation--he's very knowledgeable and helpful to rail historians. Service felt comparable to going to the Hagley; they have finding aids and will pull mater...

This was the former Lewisburg and Tyrone Railroad, a PRR subsidiary. The definitive history thus far is Mike Bezilla's article in the Spring 2006 Keystone.

These are the two wrought-iron bridges near East Hampton that are now buried intact in fill. The Lyman Viaduct was 137 feet high, while the Rapallo Viaduct was only 60 feet high. There seems to be tremendous confusion as to what the two bridges actually looked like. The c. 1905 postcard included in ...

If so, it would have been associated with dam construction. According to the newspaper accounts that have come out recently with the sale of Safe Harbor Village, there was a construction rail line that hauled limestone from the quarries on site, so a small yard there might have been useful at the ti...

I believe the bunkers were associated with the Susquehanna Ordnance Depot. This briefly operated as a TNT plant during WWII, was then converted to a munitions storage facility, and was decommissioned in 1950. The Federal prison at Allenwood was built on former Ordnance Depot land.