The Philadelphia Chapter of the

National Railway Historical Society

Established in 1936

The Wood Connecting Track was built by Conrail to allow easier access between the former Reading Trenton Line (at CP Wood) and the former Pennsylvania Morrisville Line (at CP West Lang). Previously the only access between the two lines was two miles to the east at CP MA where what remained of the former Reading Fairless Branch out of Woodbourne Yard merged into the Morrisville Line, but this route would have required long reverse moves for connecting trains. With the Wood Connecting Track, trains like TV200 and PICC, which usually ran on the Lehigh Line to North Jersey, could instead run the Harrisburg, Morrisville and Trenton Lines as an alternative. Also using this trackage were the multilevel trains ML440 and its empty counterpart ML401.

Unfortunately, after Day One this track became a no-mans land between NS and CSX and, except for a few emergency reroutes and dimensional loads, fell into disuse. Recently, however, CSX figured out that they had overhead trackage rights on the Morrisville and Harrisburg Lines and decided to test a pair of double stack trains between North Jersey and Philadelphia, what we now know as Q190 and Q191. These trains have been on the rails for five months and appear to be a success.

Dimensional moves like NS O56/CSX W997 use this track as part of the circuitous Lehigh-Trenton-Morrisville Line route (probably because of clearance restrictions in Norristown PA).