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The Philadelphia Chapter of the

National Railway Historical Society

Established in 1936

 

Railfan Pictures of the Day - 01/19/2006


Reading Company Neshaminy Interlocking and JG Tower 1954
 

The next installment on Neshaminy Falls comes from the collection of Ed Calvello from nearby Langhorne. He wrote that the two sketches of Neshaminy Interlocking were given to him a long time ago by a former operator at Trent. The first shows the west side of the interlocking featuring the wye between the New York Line (the present day Neshaminy Line) and the New York Short Line (the Trenton Line).

The second shows the east side of the interlocking, with notations for stops farther east: Parkland, Langhorne and Fairless Junction.
The next two items from 1954 are a couple of publicity pictures for one of Philadelphia's leading corporate citizens of the day: the Exide Corporation, the manufacturer of batteries founded in Philadelphia PA in 1888 by W.W. Gibbs as the Electric Storage Battery Company. The photo was taken from inside Neshaminy (JG) Tower and shows a B & O passenger train northbound on the New York Short Line approaching Neshaminy. Although almost perfectly composed, this photo was not used in the advertisement since a B & O train was pictured.
Unfortunately, the interior angle they wanted to shoot was only conducive to trains coming off the NYSL, so they did what every artist does: they improvised. For the advertisement as published, it appears that they took more shots of the operator at work, then selected one and pasted in a picture of a Reading train on the New York Line as seen through the windows. You can see that the tower has been "turned" to face the station rather than the NYSL, and bottom window in the door has been blacked out, probably to make the paste up job easier. For anyone around back then, Ed reports that the operator pictured was George Knudsen.

 

Photographs and sketches for personal educational use only. All rights reserved by original owner of image. Reproduction or redistribution in any form without express written permission is prohibited.
 
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Website created June 12, 2002

Last Updated January 19, 2006