Pennsylvania Railroad Atlantic City Service 1904 Postcard

The Standard Railroad of America Double Track Line to The Sea The Philadelphia-Atlantic City, New Jersey, corridor was the setting for one of Pennsylvania's most intense railroad rivalries, The two vintage railroads involved were the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) and the Reading Company (RDG) — specifically PRR's West Jersey and Seashore Railroad (WJ&S) and RDG's Atlantic City Railroad (AC). It was the Pennsylvania Railroad that first crossed the Delaware by bridge. The Delair Bridge, built by the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) in 1895–1896, was the first bridge of any sort between Philadelphia and New Jersey. The site chosen was in Bridesburg, far above the Ferry river traffic at the pier in Center City and Camden. The line branched off the main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad (the New York-Philadelphia route) at Frankford Junction and traveled as an elevated structure up to. the river. From there it traveled over two fixed steel spans to a steam-powered, gear-driven horizontal revolving span at a point greater than halfway across the river. After crossing the revolving span, the line travelled across another fixed steel span and then entered New Jersey. It met up with the Camden-Atlantic City Pennsylvania Railroad line at Haddonfield. The Delair Bridge (now vertical-lift) is still in use by Conrail and New Jersey Transit. The WJ&S had been formed in 1896 by the consolidation of several PRR properties in New Jersey, among them the Vintage Camden & Atlantic Railroad, which had a direct route from Camden to Atlantic City via Haddonfield and Winslow Junction; the vintage West Jersey Railroad (Camden-Cape May through Newfield and Millville plus several branches to towns west of that line); and the West Jersey & Atlantic Railroad, which ran from Newfield to Atlantic City. In 1906 the WJ&S electrified the more southerly of its routes to Atlantic City (the Newfield route, which served a more heavily populated area and did more local business than the former Camden & Atlantic) with a 650-volt third rail system. The Newfield-Atlantic City electrification as dismantled in 1931, but Camden-Millville, New Jersey electric trains lasted until 1949. The railroad's Camden-Philadelphia ferries were discontinued in 1952.