The Philadelphia Chapter of the

National Railway Historical Society

Established in 1936

As part of the Route 309 reconstruction project, the railroad bridge over the highway was replaced with a new longer span. Wednesday March 7 2007 was the day the new bridge was cut over. The temporary bridge, in use for just two weeks shy a year, is now being dismantled as it has already been sold to another railroad for use somewhere else.

Previous pages about the work can be found here, here, here, and here.

The cut over to the new bridge was already behind schedule and causing a domino effect. Without the new bridge in service (cutover work done by NS), the temporary bridge could not be dismantled by a contractor, and with the temporary bridge still in place, the road work by another contractor could not continue . To further complicate matters, one of the trains that uses the line, NS 20E, was flagged for high priority. It seems that UPS was getting annoyed with the tardy service provided by NS, and a directive was handed down from on high that no track work would be allowed to delay any UPS train. Even worse, the normally early morning arriving 20E recently started the bad habit of showing up around noon.

After a few false starts, finally the fates smiled on the project, and even threw a little celebratory confetti in the form of a snow storm, as 20E showed up early on March 7, and after 20Q passed CP Lang, NS slab train 67Z headed west and became the last train to cross over the temporary bridge.

All pictures March 7 2007 Copyright © 2007 Rich Pattison

Photographs for personal use only. All rights reserved by original owner of image. Reproduction or redistribution in any form without express written permission is prohibited.