Lehigh Valley Transit Company - Route and Schedule

Route and Schedule

A Saturday-Sunday schedule for April 1938 shows Allentown to Philadelphia interurban "Expresses" leaving Allentown on the hour from 6 am to 10 pm. There were twenty five scheduled stops en route but many more stops occurred simply by a rider "buzzing" the motorman or by flagging the car down. Scheduled arrival at the P&W Norristown station was 1 hr 38 minutes later. Typical running time between the scheduled stops was two to six minutes. The Germantown Pike stop to Norristown's LVT+P&W station stop took a long 14 minutes because it included a southbound-northbound car "meet" with an LVT-P&W operator swap at Marshall passing siding in the middle of Norristown's Markley Street. This siding sat between Marshall and Airy Streets. The two cars were positioned door to door so that the motormen could step directly from car to car. Then, a P&W crew took the southbound car the half block down Markley to Airey where it turned east for four blocks, then south on Swede and a jog from Swede onto a trolley-only bridge over Norristown's Main Street and into the P&W's elevated station. The 1938 schedule showed four "Expresses" operating on the line at the same time. Hourly local service had many more stops and used typical streetcar style equipment which were the 1902 "St. Louis" built cars. Local service operated between the Expresses and ran Allentown to Center Valley at the north end and Hatfield to Norristown at the south end. With four cars operational at any given time, one southbound-northbound limited meet was normally at Marshall siding in Norristown and the other at Nace Siding in open country just north of Souderton and the Souderton carbarn. The Reading Railroad's Allentown Branch from Philadelpia stopped at many of the same towns as the LVT and their passenger trains occasionally paced one another.