In addition to the lines focused on Center City and Camden, during this period there were smaller commuter nodes in North and Northeast Philadelphia.īy about 1890, however, the commuter railroads had their first real competition from the electric streetcars (especially when suburban trolleys were allied with urban subway and elevated trains). The final decades of the nineteenth century were truly the halcyon days of commuter rail service in the region with a large variety of lines linking the city to its hinterland. In fact, competing lines were built to Chester, Norristown, and Chestnut Hill, as the railroads’ only competition for travel beyond two miles or so were other railroads. In the 1870s and 1880s, a variety of factors ranging from increased railway consolidation and greater competition among the surviving companies to new and better central passenger stations in Philadelphia, allowed for the region’s three railroad systems (the Pennsylvania, Philadelphia & Reading and Baltimore & Ohio) to build or assemble extensive commuter networks centered on Philadelphia and Camden. Commuters at Jenkintown Junction, photographed in 1892, await the train arriving in the distance. One notable exception to this early dichotomy was the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad that both linked its namesake cities as a trunk carrier in 1838 and began actively developing commuter traffic from the 1850s. Prior to the Civil War, in general, railways tended to be either local carriers (like the PGN), which carried extensive commuter traffic, or “trunk line” railroads, like the Philadelphia & Columbia (later the Pennsylvania Railroad), which tended to focus on long-distance freight and passenger traffic and had very few local trains. This line, like Britain’s London & Greenwich Railway (opened in 1836), was designed from the outset to rely upon local traffic. The region’s first commuter rail line was the Philadelphia, Germantown & Norristown Railroad (the PGN), which began operation in 1832. By the twenty-first century, commuter trains offered a “green alternative” to the crowded highways and automobile-oriented culture of the United States. Commuter trains connected middle-class homes in the city’s neighborhoods and suburbs with the offices, stores, and entertainment of Center City and, according to historian Jack Simmons, allowed for “the liberation of women” in the late-nineteenth century. For most of this period, the trains charged higher fares than other forms of public transit and remained a largely middle-class means of transport. The trains influenced suburban development and shaped Center City. Philadelphia, the Place that Loves You BackĬommuter trains have helped to shape and define Philadelphia and its region since their introduction in 1832.
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