Reading Trains and Trolleys

Philip K. Smith has used the massive photo collection of railroads and trolleys from the Historical Society of Berks County along with his historical introduction to rail in the Reading/Berks County area of Pennsylvania. The photos, in black and white, cover engines and other equipment, stations, railroad yards, and people of the Philadelphia & Reading Railway (later the Reading Railroad of Monopoly fame) as well as trolleys that served the city and surrounding area. Instead of chronological order, Smith arranges his material into topics with excellent captions. Although George and Gloria Jean Meiser do cover railroads in their multivolume The passing scene, the pictures are scattered among the twenty or so volumes and many of these show more photos were not used by the Meisers.

This book gives a sense of what it was like to ride the Reading and currently to ride the tourist Wanamaker, Kempton & Southern Railroad (the Hawk Mountain line) and the Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway with its fall leaf rambles from Port Clinton to Jim Thorpe. It brought back memories of riding the Reading to Philadelphia during the Christmas holiday season when I was a child, leaving from the elegant Franklin Street Station. I was also fortunate in the fifties to be able to ride one of the last surviving trolleys on Penn Street.

There is no bibliography and this book does not replace the definitive 2 volume set by Jim Holton, The Reading Railroad or the many books on the history of railroads by Benjamin Bernhart but it is a good place to start and is an enjoyable way to pass an afternoon. show less