READING, Pa. — Two Pennsylvania counties have agreed to create a passenger rail authority to support restoration of service between Reading and Philadelphia, leaving just one more county needing to approve formation of the authority.
The Pottstown Mercury reports commissioners in Berks and Montgomery counties approved creation of the Schuylkill River Passenger Rail Authority on Thursday, following public hearings. Chester County is scheduled to vote on the proposal next week.
Proponents say the authority is needed to help pursuit of competitive infrastructure funding, and to work with Amtrak, the Federal Railroad Administration, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, and other agencies.
The proposal would create a nine-member board including members of the county commissions, planning commissions, other agencies, and local mayors. Commissioners in both counties voted unanimously in favor of the proposal.
The Reading-Philadelphia route is among those included in Amtrak’s “Connects US” plan for possible additions to state-supported passenger service. The Amtrak report on that plan envisions three daily round trips between Reading and New York via Philadelphia.
RDG ran a unique service from Philadelphia to Reading and Pottsville, to Bethlehem, to Newtown and to Newark (connecting to NY) with a fleet of 14 RDC-1’s, 1 RDC-2, 1 RDC-3 (both as refreshment cars), 6 Deluxe coaches and 3 FP7’s.
They had fine-tuned the service between Philadelphia and Reading such that the 4 tracks from Phoenixville to Norristown Jct. could handle all the passenger service on No. 3 track (the WB outside main with 251 bidirectional signals) freeing 1, 3 and 2 tracks to be staging for Abrams Yard.
Today, there isn’t any through bus service between Philadelphia and Reading; you either change at NY (200 miles to go 60) or ride a local SEPTA bus as far as it goes, take a cab or Uber to Birdsboro and a BARTA local bus to Reading.
I road the Philadelphia to Reading and Pottsville service under Conrail till the service ended with the opening of the center city commuter tunnel. The route mentioned existed under the management till the end of service. While through train service did not run from Reading to New York, it was possible to connect in Philadelphia Reading Terminal between the Reading trains and the two weekday trains from Philadelphia and Newark, NJ. Now with the availability to run trains with both diesel and electric engines Amtrak could run this service as a through train using the historic routes used in the past. But as mentioned some track or sidings will have to be upgraded to get the service back to useful speeds. The automobile traffic on the roads servicing both Philadelphia and New York are jammed especially during weekday rush hours. So I am sure this train service would be well used.
My Dad was a yard conductor on the Reading until about 1972. He had a company wide pass and could apply for occasional passes for family members. I remember several family trips to Philadelphia via the Lebanon Valley branch to Reading Outer Station (not the same as the currernt Reading and Northern’s newer Outer Station) where we transferred to the Pottsville-Philadelphia trains.
Let’s grab that money and not worry about operations yet. Real issue is how to negotiate with NS. Pay off NS to run shorter and on time trains. On time trains! Electrification would please the environmental crowd and the NIMBYs.
Stuck in traffic every day in king of Prussia.
Is that route really long enough for AMTRAK service? Or should SEPTA be runnning it? It is unfortunate that pieces of the track between Reading and Allentown and Philadelphia and Bethlehem have been torn up.
I agree that SEPTA is a more logical provider of service to Philadelphia. SEPTA would serve the vast majority of users and would probably provide more than 3 trips per day, however it would require a change of trains to get to New York.
SEPTA did sponsor service from Philadelphia to Reading and Pottsville. They were told they are a 5-county agency and could not sponsor service in Berks or Schuylkill Counties.
They also did not know how they could operate RDC’s in Philadelphia’s Center City Tunnel. Dual Mode AC/Diesel locomotives were unknown then. As a result they first discontinued service beyond Montgomery and Chester Counties, and ran a shuttle from Norristown. That was discontinued for cost/benefit reasons.
Negotiations with NS over rail service will be interesting as there is a single-track tunnel West of Phoenixville and track reduction from four to two under CR and NS between Phoenixville and Abrams Yard.
Significantly the PRR line between Norristown (adjacent to SEPTA Station) and Pottsville was there for the taking when ConRail came in, but neither SEPTA nor the Commonwealth wanted it.
Sure…