History
In the early 20th century Atlantic City and the South Jersey seashore were major seaside vacation destinations for the Philadelphia area for wealthy and working class alike. The popularity of South Jersey's seashore was made possible by rail transport providing inexpensive and fast service between the cities and towns where people lived, and the seashore where they played.
There were two competing railroad companies connecting Camden (and by ferry to Philadelphia), with the resorts of Southern New Jersey seashore. Competition was fierce and by its height in the 1920s competition between the West Jersey and Seashore Railroad (WJ&S, owned by the Pennsylvania) and the Atlantic City Railroad (owned by the Reading) was so keen that at one time both lines boasted some of the fastest trains in the world. Trains often raced one another so as to be the first to arrive at their destination. Racing was encouraged by the fact that in many areas, the two lines were only several hundred feet apart. On the Cape May lines, the trains were in sight of each other for 11 miles between Cape May Court House and Cape May. Over the last 5 miles into Cape May, the tracks were only 50 feet apart.
On July 1, 1926, the Benjamin Franklin Bridge opened. It was originally called Delaware River Bridge, and spanned the Delaware River, connecting Philadelphia and Camden. Car, truck and bus usage increased as the State of New Jersey built roads in the 1920s and 30s next to the railroads going from Camden to the shore, cutting into profits.
On March 4, 1931, New Jersey's public utility regulators ordered the two companies to join their southern New Jersey lines into one company, The Consolidation Agreement had decreed that the Pennsylvania Railroad had two-thirds ownership, and the Reading Company had one-third ownership. But the post-war rise of the automobile and the Atlantic City Expressway built in the 1960s not only caused people to abandon the railroad for their cars, but also to abandon Atlantic City for more exotic vacation destinations. By the late 1960s, the surviving former Camden and Atlantic Main Line was reduced to a commuter service funded by the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) running trains of Budd RDC railcars operating from a small terminal at Lindenwold PATCO station and Atlantic City.
While the P-RSL did not enter bankruptcy, its owners, the Penn Central, (successor to the PRR) and the RDG did. As a result Conrail took over the P-RSL on April 1, 1976.
Read more about this topic: Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines
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