Pennsylvania - Reading Seashore Lines Historical Society

In honor of being added as a link in the member's page of the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines website I will spend the next couple of blog posts showing B&W pictures I took in 1960. I have loved trains as long as I can remember and a Sunday School teacher (Ed Evans) further fueled that interest. In 1960 a friend and I decided to walk the tracks between my hometown (Woodbury Heights) and his (Westville). We were 13 and took pictures and notes. Here is the first batch.

We found this work equipment in Gloucester / Bellmawr and that is me illegally climbing all over it.

I must have liked to climb since I am now on a box car stored on the PRSL spurs just shy of Big Timber Creek. The building in the background used to be a power plant for the electrified commuter service that ran from Camden to Glassboro and beyond. The electric service ceased in 1948 but the power plant shut down in 1926 (the electric company provided cheaper power). The straight ahead spur used to feed coal to the power plant and the spur to the left used to go to a Buzby Bros. cement mixing plant.

This was the last Westville station (has been torn down). It was a small brick station that replaced a much larger station when a crossover road needed to be built in the area. In addition to the original station there was a passenger shelter on the other side of the tracks and a small freight house and spur behing the original station on the right. As you can see the middle track has already been removed and the area would be single tracked down the road.

This is the Baldwin Road Switcher that darn near ran over us. We were resting, sitting on a rail and happened to get up when this thing came barreling past us at high speed with no warning.