Where it all began

Thanks to an infected and swollen right index finger, yrs trly has finally been able to read one of his many books start-to-finish.
It’s a book I just got, a color picture-book of Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines in south Jersey (“REDD-ing,” not “READ-ing”).
“Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines” (PRSL) is an amalgamation of Pennsylvania and Reading railroad-lines in south Jersey to counter the fact the two railroads had too much parallel track. It was promulgated in 1933. It serviced mainly the Jersey seashore from Philadelphia.
I have hundreds of books on railroads, cars, and classic airplanes, and never the time to read them.
I’m always otherwise occupied; writing this here blog, and running our frenzied torrent of errands and medical appointments.
I also have magazines to read.
I used to read magazines cover-to-cover. The books were for retirement.
Now I’m retired with no time to read much of anything.
The books continue to go unread, and my magazines get short shrift.
The book is by John Stroup, who grew up in south Jersey like me.
I purchased it a few weeks ago at a model-train show at a local college.
The seller claimed it was the only copy he had; $30.
“Why that book?” my friend, who accompanied me, asked.
“Because that’s where it all began,” I shouted.


Where it all began. (Photo by Robert Long©.)

In 1946, at age-2, my father sat me in the front wooden orange-crate basket of his heavy balloon-tire Columbia bicycle.
I can imagine my mother: “Thomas, you gotta do something with your son; get outta the house so I can clean!”
He pedaled me to the railroad-station in nearby Haddonfield, NJ (“HAH-din-field”).
Haddonfield was on old Revolutionary-War town. We lived in a suburb just north of Haddonfield.
The railroad was the old Camden & Atlantic, built in 1853. (“KAM-din;” as in “amble.”)
The Camden & Atlantic is the main reason Atlantic City was founded.
People from Philadelphia would escape to the Jersey seashore in summer via it, although they had to ferry across the Delaware River.
The Pennsylvania Railroad got control of Camden & Atlantic, and built a connector bridge across the river in 1896.
But the bridge was in north Philadelphia. A line had to be built down to the Camden & Atlantic. The junction was in west Haddonfield.
A competing railroad was also built, Camden to Atlantic City, the “Atlantic City Railroad.”
Reading got control of it, and Pennsy and Reading used to race to Atlantic City from their adjacent ferry-terminals in Camden.
But a gigantic highway bridge across the river opened in 1926, which began putting the kibosh on railroad seashore trade.
By my time everything was PRSL.
We pedaled out a dead-end street south of and parallel to the railroad, and east of the station.
The black-and-white photo above is the exact location, though taken in 1953.
It’s where a long-abandoned branch into farm-country left the mainline to Atlantic City, although a wye was still in the woods.
Commuter-trains would come out from Camden, and then turn their power on the wye.
There also was a water-tower at the junction, so steam-engines might fill their tenders with water there. (You can see a water standpipe in the photograph.)
Trains coming in from the seashore would whistle for the many grade-crossings in Haddonfield — my father claimed they were whistling for me. We’d wave.
Free theater; I was enthralled.
Steam-locomotives were still in use on PRSL, mainly locomotives from owners Pennsy and Reading.
PRSL apparently had a few steam-locomotives of their own, but I don’t remember seeing any.
I was terrified by thunderstorms, but could stand right next to a gigantic throbbing steam-locomotive.
What I always preferred were the Pennsy steamers. They were attractive, well proportioned, and had that gorgeous red keystone number-plate on the center of the smokebox door.
That red number-plate was the giveaway; I could see it coming miles away.
I’ve been a railfan ever since.
My doctor lanced the infection; gobs of pus flowed out.
I was prescribed an antibiotic, and told to soak my finger twice each day — 20 minutes per soak.
Since it was my right hand, and I’m right-handed, I couldn’t do anything during the soaks.
So I dragged out the PRSL book. I had it fully read in 6-7 soaks.
It’s not a heavy read — it’s a picture-book.
PRSL is where it all started; I’ve been chasing trains ever since.
(I’m now 66.)

• I grew up in south Jersey, but now live in western NY.
• “Camden” is the city in south Jersey across the Delaware River from Philadelphia.
• A “wye” (“why”) is a triangular section of track, shaped like the letter “Y,” with a switch at each end. A locomotive or train can be reversed on it. (The stub-ends of the wye in Haddonfield were only long enough for a locomotive.)