All through October, Classic Trains editors are celebrating the gritty, coal-hauling, Pennsylvania-based Reading Company railroad. Please enjoy this photo gallery of Reading freight trains selected from the image archives of Kalmbach Media‘s David P. Morgan Library.
Reading Company, as a railroad, disappeared into Conrail more than 40 years ago. But it is still possible to “take a ride on the Reading.” This can be done when playing the board game Monopoly, or (more literally) by boarding a Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority commuter train in the Philadelphia area. Today, the Reading (pronounced “Redding”) would be termed a regional carrier, but in the classic era, it had a much larger presence on the railroad scene than its approximately 1,300 route-mile would suggest.
Reading Company freight trains hauled tonnage along a broad path that stretched from Williamsport and Shippensburg, Pa., in the west, south to Cape May, N.J., and north and east to Allentown, Pa., and Port Reading, N.J.
Reading freight trains and passenger trains often passed through Philadelphia and, of course, Reading, Pa.
That’s Perkasie, not “Perkaske” (my hometown). I remember seeing that combination of C-630, SD-45, and U-30C on an ore train to Bethlehem. These very heavy trains sometimes had to double the hill on the 1.2% grade through Perkasie tunnel. The crew would leave the rear of the train on the main at Perkasie and pull the front end through the tunnel to the crest of the grade at Rockhill, leave the cars on the quarry siding, and go back to Perkasie to retrieve the rest of their train. I’m wondering if that’s the operation pictured here, since this lash up seems to be traveling southbound on the northbound track.
P-5-s-e 4-4-2 343 was overhauled in 1936 and displayed at the Reading Fair. This is probably where the photo was taken. Note the fancy lining on the cylinders, drivers and the other wheels.
Good to hear that you’re featuring the Reading Co. this month. The Reading main west of Harrisburg bisected my uncle’s farm just outside of my hometown of Dillsburg, PA which really piqued me interest in railroading. The Reading’s PH&P Branch (today’s NS Lurgan Branch) hosted an endless parade of interesting motive power of not only Reading but also Western Maryland, B&O, N&W, and PC. Much to my surprise after college graduation, there appeared an ad in the Harrisburg newspaper where the Reading Co. was looking for “men who could type 40 words per minute”. I had just come out of a semester where I had to type 3 term papers. I was in good practice and 2 weeks out of college I found myself working as a clerk/operator for the Reading, mostly out of Rutherford Yard but also Lebanon, Hershey, Harrisburg, Steelton, Camp Hill, Mt. Holly Springs, and Lurgan. It was a great experience!