The
Pomeroy and Newark Railroad
Revised September 2010
Dates
of Construction:
1869-1873
Dates
of Abandonment in New Garden Township: 1936 South of Landenberg, 1943 North of
Landenberg
Length
in New Garden Township: 1.8 miles
Stations
in New Garden Township: Landenberg
The
Pomeroy and Newark Railroad was without doubt the least successful of the three
train lines that wound through New Garden Township. Construction occurred
during the second half of the 19th Century, the boom period of the railroad
industry, when trains captivated the nation. No terrain seemed insurmountable
and every small route appeared to possess great potential. Many of the
speculative local lines built during this era promptly failed, swallowing the
invested savings of thousands of farmers and businessmen. The Pomeroy and
Newark never approached initial investors’ expectations and their losses were
particularly high.
The
original stakeholders built the line stretching from Pomeroy, Pennsylvania to Delaware
City, Delaware to provide the Pennsylvania Railroad access to an ice free port
on the Delaware River. The powerful Pennsylvania Railroad suffered from
insufficient terminal facilities at the end of its Main Line in Philadelphia
and sought another outlet for the growing freight traffic pouring in from new
routes in western Pennsylvania and Ohio. Although Delaware City was no more
than a quiet town, railroad officials considered it a viable option for a port;
it was mostly downgrade from the Main Line at Pomeroy allowing gravity to facilitate
the passage of long coal trains, and far enough south to avoid the winter ice
in the Delaware River (pollution and warmer temperatures had yet to prevent ice
from sealing the port of Philadelphia). Furthermore, Delaware City’s location closer
to the mouth of the river reduced the total mileage freight had to travel from
the west to reach the Atlantic. Shortening this distance promised to make the
Pennsylvania Railroad more competitive with its rival, the New York Central,
which enjoyed well established port facilities on the Hudson River. The small
line did not go unnoticed by these competitive interests. A New York Times
editorial in April 1873 cautioned readers about the potential threat from this
new route:
The communication between
the navigable waters of the Delaware and the great West is becoming every day
more and more intimate, and the foreign trade which at present appears to be so
rapidly growing up on that river, small as it still is compared with that of
this port, is a thing which should at least suggest to us the question whether
we are not in danger of indulging a degree of confidence in our own position,
which may in the end prove far from beneficial to our commercial prosperity.[i]
Recognizing
the speculative nature of the venture, the Pennsylvania Railroad encouraged
local supporters to subscribe to stock in the line and attempted to limit its
contribution primarily to political support and construction assistance. This
typified the giant railroad’s strategy in this time period. It leased and
operated a line after others invested significant capital, leaving open the
possibility to purchase and control the track for pennies on the dollar if the
project failed.

Significant
lobbying was required to raise the funds needed for construction. An article
written for the West Chester Jeffersonian newspaper blasted those who refused
to contribute or stood in the railroad’s path:
Many who now think this
road will be of no service to them, will, in future years, when advertising
their farms for sale, give prominence to the fact that they are near a station
on the [railroad], well knowing that no purchaser of land will go far from a
R.R. and buy unless at a very low rate.[ii]
It continued by emphasizing the prospects for the
line:
The route is surrounded by
almost every element of strength to make a successful and profitable road,
either for freight or passengers, a dense population, a rich agricultural
region, numerous factories and villages, bodies of iron ore, and a limestone
district on the borders of the Delaware, nearer to the peninsula than any
other.[iii]
As the
article indicates, the railroad had the potential to serve numerous local
purposes as well as the Pennsylvania Railroad’s strategic interest. Most residents
were thrilled about the prospect of this new form of transportation reaching
their doorsteps. Communities were thriving up and down the Buck Run, Doe Run and
White Clay Creek Valleys, and farmers and merchants looked to the railroad as a
way to expand their markets. The initial excitement and lobbying generated
enough capital contributions to complete surveys and begin grading the line in
1869. A few large contributors helped propel stock subscriptions for the
portion of the line in Pennsylvania. One prominent initial investor was Martin
Landenberger, the entrepreneur who consolidated and expanded the woolen mills in
Landenberg. He served as an early director and reportedly contributed close to
half a million dollars to the construction
of the line, an enormous sum in the early 1870’s.[iv] The
railroad permitted the cheap and efficient movement of raw materials to the Landenberg
mills and the delivery of yarn to the company’s stocking mills in Philadelphia.
As a director, Landenberger pleaded and fought with the Pennsylvania Railroad for
financial contributions to the point of his resignation in 1872.[v] Ultimately,
the valleys’ farmers and entrepreneurs could not cover the construction cost
alone and the Pennsylvania Railroad periodically injected small amounts of
capital to sustain the project.
The steep
topography of the local valleys complicated the planning and construction of
the railroad. The portion of the line in the southwest corner of New Garden
Township was one of the most challenging sections. In order to thread the track
into Landenberg from the north, engineers built five large bridges over the
White Clay Creek and blasted a 300 ft long, 50 ft deep cut through the hillside
all in less than a mile. North of Auburn Road, construction crews permanently
altered the course of the White Clay to avoid building two additional
crossings. Other than rudimentary dynamite, limited tools existed to help construct
the rail bed. Many local farmers pitched in with their teams of horses to
assist with the grading. Two teams and one man received $4.50 a day for their
assistance.[vi] Hundreds
of laborers, many of them recent immigrants, were recruited to supply additional
manpower. Families along the route provided support for the workers. John and
Lydia Miller, who lived off Garden Station Road in the extreme southeastern
corner of London Grove Township provided accommodations for many of those engaged
in constructing the track between Avondale and Landenberg.[vii] Despite
the support, the working conditions were difficult, particularly during the
winter. Workers struggled to keep warm grading the line amid the chilly winds,
snow and icy streams. A local paper reported in March of 1872, “complaint has
been made by farmers that the workmen during the cold weather made free use of
their fences for fuel. Fence rails being dry burn better than cord-wood.”[viii]

Bridge #44, one of the five bridges over the White Clay Creek
north of Landenberg (2009)

Large cut north of Landenberg circa 1910. Penn Green Road
crossed the railroad on the bridge in the background. (New Garden Historical
Commission files)
After over
two million dollars of investment and nearly four years of construction fraught
with delays, the first regularly scheduled passenger train steamed down the
track with much fanfare on June 30, 1873. The Daily Local News reported, “The
people are wild with enthusiasm over the event of the opening of this new
thoroughfare of enterprise through their localities.”[ix] The
original line, known as the Pennsylvania and Delaware Railway, opened with 17
stations (more were added). Many of the stations were named for the initial supporters’
farms and villages through which it passed. Trains stopped at Baker Station
north of Avondale where Baker & Phillips quarried limestone; Aaron Baker
had been one of the early proponents and directors of the line. Many of the
original bridge abutments were built from stone quarried on his property.[x] Landenberg
was the only official stop in New Garden Township. The railroad shared the station
building with the Wilmington and Western Railroad, which arrived from Hockessin
in the Fall of 1872. A passage in the local newspaper described the initial
station, which opened in 1873, as “not strictly of the Grecian nor yet Roman
order of architecture, but embraces much that is useful and beautiful from
both.”[xi]
Apparently it failed to embrace much of either as only two years later the
railroads built a “new and handsome” station to replace the “old shed.”[xii] An
additional track was added in Landenberg in 1876 to help facilitate the
transfer of shipments between the railroads. A siding branched off to the north
of the line and ran both into and parallel to the lumber
and coal yard later owned by the Sheehan family. Customers pulled their wagons,
and later trucks, up to the siding to receive loads of coal.

Train at Landenberg Station in 1941 (looking southeast). This
is the side of the station building. The fencing in the foreground forms a
small cattle pen. The building in the background is the creamery. The track in
the front left of the photo runs to Sheehan's yard (see photo and map below).
(New Garden Historical Commission files)

Sheehan Brothers Warehouse. Sheehan ran a coal and lumber
yard and sold farm supplies. (New Garden Historical Commission files)

Bridge carrying the tracks over Landenberg Road. The steel
road bridge in the foreground stood until the Fall of 2009. It reopened in the
Summer of 2010 with many of the original features preserved. (New Garden
Historical Commission files)

Landenberg Valuation Map (adapted from a Wilmington and Western
blueprint). (New Garden Historical Commission files)
A mile up
the line, across the bridges and through the cut, engineers built a dam on the
small stream that winds west from the end of Laurel Heights Road. Water flowed
through a small pipe from the dam to a water plug adjacent to the tracks. The
water plug stood roughly eight feet tall and had an arm that could be swung
over the tender. It served as a spigot for train crews to refill their steam
engines approximately halfway along the line. There was also a siding used for
public delivery on the east side of the main line where local farmers could
receive and ship materials, with a small access lane off of Auburn Road. The
stop was often referred to as “Water Plug Siding,” owing to the water source. Pennsylvania
Railroad manuals from the 1890’s also list the stop as “The Graham Kaolin Co.,”
one of the primary kaolin mining businesses in the township. Although the
company shipped most of its clay east on the Wilmington and Western, which ran
closer to the kaolin mines, this siding may have been used to receive materials
or provide an alternative shipping point.

Remnants of the dam near the Water Plug
Siding (2009)
The next
official station on the line north of Landenberg was New Garden, located a few
hundred meters into London Grove Township on Garden Station Road. The station
and a gristmill stood just north of the road on the east side of the main track.
No known photographs or drawings of the station exist and its appearance is unclear.
Martin W. Meloney, who lived on a farm nearby, donated $100 for its
construction, a sufficient amount at the time to build at least a small wooden
structure.[xiii]

Approximate location of New Garden Station
(looking north from Garden Station Road) (2009)
Financial
difficulty afflicted the railroad from the start. The winding nature of the
line made operating long coal trains difficult; the curves stressed both the
rails and the cars. Furthermore, large port facilities failed to materialize at
Delaware City. Revenue from the local stores and industries fell far short of
covering operating expenses. The numerous wooden bridges and grading required
frequent maintenance, which compounded the problems. Trees and ice chucks
lodged behind the timber bridge supports during floods, often exerting enough
pressure to dislodge the structures from their foundations. In addition, the
Board of Directors acquired $1,083,000 of first mortgage debt and $519,000 of second
mortgage debt, both of which bore an interest rate of 7%. These required
payments of over $112,000 each year. Even at its peak after the turn of the
century this small line usually earned less than half of this in revenue,
let alone profit. In addition to these mortgages, the railroad carried a small
amount of floating debt. Needless to say, the stockholders’ $900,000 interest looked
all but lost. The Pennsylvania Railroad elected not to renew its lease in February
1879. This was likely the final straw, and the railroad, faced with
insurmountable losses and the inability to satisfy creditors, declared bankruptcy
later that year, after only six years of operations.
Mr. Dell
Noblit, President of the Corn Exchange Bank in Philadelphia, who was affiliated
with the Pennsylvania Railroad, purchased the line for a meager $100,000 at public
auction in August 1879, indicating the bleak prospects for the enterprise.
Initial investors, including Landenberger, lost everything. Realizing that
large port facilities were not materializing at Delaware City, the Pennsylvania
Railroad considered leasing and using the Wilmington and Western line out of
Landenberg to establish the warmer water port facilities at Wilmington. During
this brief time the Wilmington and Western was successfully operating trains
between Wilmington, Landenberg and Pomeroy. It was reported that the trains
were often long enough to require two engines.[xiv] The
prospects seemed high for a joint venture. However, the Pennsylvania’s strategy
fizzled as speculators and later the Baltimore and Ohio gained control of the
Wilmington and Western to capitalize on its valuable trackage rights into
Wilmington. The Pennsylvania Railroad reluctantly assumed control of and leased
the portion of the Pennsylvania and Delaware line between Pomeroy and Newark,
renaming it the Pomeroy and Newark Railroad in December 1881. The Philadelphia,
Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad, also controlled at this time by the
Pennsylvania Railroad, acquired the line between Newark and Delaware City. With
the original route divided at Newark, the Pennsylvania’s dreams of using the
line as a shortcut to a significant new port on the Delaware River effectively vanished.
Fortunately, a much flatter and straighter route running along the Susquehanna
River from Columbia to Perryville opened in 1877 and largely satisfied the need
for such a line. The Pomeroy and Newark became primarily a local railroad.

Local
traffic remained insufficient to cover operating expenses and the line ran at a
loss even in good years. The corporate ledger lists deficits in every year from
1881 to 1911. What revenue the line did earn came primarily from freight
service. In addition to agricultural products, the Buck Run and Doe Run Valleys
had numerous paper, saw and flour mills. E.A. and J.L. Pennock ran a successful
lumber business in Chatham. Further south, the lime and stone quarries near
Baker Station provided additional freight. Train crews also unloaded
significant quantities of beer at Baker in the mid-1890’s, prompting a
correspondent for the Daily Local News to ponder whether it was a speakeasy:
The amount of beer
unloaded every two or three days at Baker Station… is a source of wonder to
beholders. On Saturday afternoon last the supply shipped to that point
consisted of ten kegs, containing not less than fifty gallons, beside six cases
of two dozen bottles each of this intoxicating beverage. A train official told
a passenger that this was no unusual shipment and the matter is a general topic
of discussion among travelers…[xv]
Most of
the business in New Garden Township came from Landenberg. In addition to the
woolen mills and Sheehan’s coal and lumber business, a bone mill on the
southern edge of town, just south of the New Garden Township line, received shipments
of buffalo bones from the Great Plains to grind into fertilizer. Most of the
industry south of Landenberg was concentrated on the northern side of Newark. A
lumber business, the Atlantic Refining Company, and later the American
Vulcanized Fibre Company provided traffic for the route. In the early days
before the bankruptcy, the portion of the line near Delaware City handled
peaches bound for markets to the north and west. According to Amos Osmond, the longtime
conductor on the Pomeroy and Newark, the railroad also hauled munitions and
other sensitive materials under the watchful eyes of soldiers during the First
World War.[xvi]

The Bone Mill south of Landenberg. The siding running next
to the top story facilitated the loading and unloading of materials. (New
Garden Historical Commission files)
The
railroad carried smaller shipments of goods for the local stores, which
residents depended on for their everyday needs. A wreck in 1887 one and half
miles below Landenberg exposed one transported commodity. The local newspaper correspondent
on the scene reported, “One car was partly loaded with watermelons. The younger
part of the spectators seemed to know it, as your correspondent saw some
watermelons take legs after dark, walk up the bank and disappear into a corn
field beyond. Some few rushed down the railroad and disappeared in the darkness.”[xvii] Milk traffic
was another significant source of business for the line. Chester County had
numerous dairies, and farmers used the railroad to ship their raw milk to
creameries. An icehouse on the northern portion of the route above Clonmell
station provided crews with a source of ice to keep the milk cool during
transit. Milk cans were a common sight on station platforms as farmers would
often leave the full vessels for freight handlers to load and return empty later
in the day.
Receipts
from passenger service were small, averaging slightly over $5,000 a year
between 1881 and 1893. A ticket in 1907 cost three cents per mile in Delaware
and two cents per mile in Pennsylvania.[xviii] The
entire journey from Pomeroy to Newark cost slightly over 50 cents. Passenger
trains ran twice a day in each direction on weekdays, departing Newark around
7am and 2pm and Pomeroy around 10am and 5pm. In the 19th Century the
passenger cars were coupled to the freight trains, which precipitated notorious
delays. After only two months of operations the Daily Local News reported, “A
joker says that the passenger trains… from Pomeroy to Delaware City, run
tri-weekly, meaning that it takes them one week to go up and two weeks to come
down.”[xix] Beginning
in 1901, the Pennsylvania Railroad began operating passenger only trains on the
line. A steam engine pulled a passenger coach and a combination car for
carrying baggage and picking up and dropping off milk cans along the route. Amos
Osborne’s two sons worked along side him as the baggagemaster and fireman,
prompting the local paper to joke, “Conductor Osborne is sorry that he ran out
of sons before the train was fully equipped.”[xx] A mail
handler also frequently worked on the passenger trains, picking up, sorting and
delivering mail to the stations. The mail contract generated approximately $800
a year in additional revenue. Locals affectionately referred to the train as
the “Pommie Doodle,” and looked upon it fondly despite the generally low
patronage. The Pennsylvania Railroad had a less affectionate view owing to high
operating costs and steep losses. In the last few years of service the
Pennsylvania used single gasoline powered
cars called Doodlebugs for passenger service to replace the more expensive
steam powered trains.

Pomeroy and Newark Railroad schedule from 1913 with
connections to Philadelphia. “f” indicates a flag stop, when the train would
only stop upon notice to the conductor. These occurred at the smaller stations.
(Author’s collection)
The
tracks suffered from deferred maintenance and derailments were frequent. It was
reported in 1879, less than a decade after construction, “some of the
cross-ties are so rotten that the spikes which hold the rails to their places
could be drawn out with the hand.”[xxi] Thousands
of these rotten ties were removed in 1882. Track crews also struggled with
soggy areas that eroded the ties and ballast, including one notorious stretch
in New Garden Township a half mile north of Auburn Road. An engineering report singled
out this area, “the bottom of the cut becomes so soft in wet weather that a
fence rail when stood on end in the ditch will sink down out of sight.”[xxii] Reports
of the train running off the tracks due the misalignment of the rails or crumbling
bridge supports were frequent. One particularly nasty accident occurred on
bridge number 42 at the New Garden and Franklin Township line in January 1904.
Chunks of ice rushing down the flooded White Clay Creek damaged the bridge and
caused the supports to collapse under the weight of the afternoon train. A
reporter for The Avondale Herald provided the dramatic details,
…when the evening
passenger train was crossing the heavy timbers gave way at the southern end
allowing the front end of the passenger coach and part of the tender to crash
through into the roaring waters. The heavy engine was thrown completely over on
its right side at the top of the embankment and badly wrecked. The only thing
that prevented the passenger coach from falling over completely was that the
coupling pin holding it and the combination and milk car at the rear did not
break.[xxiii]

P&N Passenger car on
Bridge 42 after the accident. Front page of The Avondale Herald January 29, 1904.
(Chester County Historical Society Library)
Fortunately,
no one was killed. Haphazard repairs were common, but the poor conditions
eventually forced the railroad to significantly rebuild many of the 65 bridges on
the line. Some of the wooden structures were replaced with steel, and the loose
stone abutments were restored with newly invented poured concrete. Many bridges
bear the date of their upgrading. Work began on the southern end near Newark in
1910 and reached Avondale in 1911. A few of the abutments on the northern end have
1912 stamps.

Abutment dated 1910 in the White Clay
Creek Preserve (2009)
By
the 1920’s automobiles and trucks were rapidly cannibalizing the Pomeroy and
Newark’s small sources of revenue. Due to waning demand the railroad petitioned
to abandon passenger service in the late 1920’s. Despite resistance from
residents and business groups the last passenger train rolled down the tracks
in September 1928. Freight traffic also dwindled.
Business on the sparsely populated 3.5 mile stretch between Landenberg and
Thompson, Delaware (just south of the state line) had been scarce for years. The
last deliveries for this wooded section meandering along the White Clay Creek were
three carloads to Yeatman Station in 1931. The railroad discontinued all remaining
through service on this portion of the line in September 1933 and the tracks deteriorated
until it was officially abandoned in 1936.[xxiv] Trains
continued infrequent service between Newark and Thompson delivering primarily
fertilizer and picking up loads of clay until a severe storm on July 5, 1937 heavily
damaged the connecting tracks. The Pennsylvania Railroad had no desire or
motivation to spend the estimated $25,000 needed for repairs and the Interstate
Commerce Commission granted permission to abandon this three-mile section from
Thompson to above the industries on the northern edge of Newark in 1938. [xxv]
Freight
trains continued to operate on the line between Pomeroy and Avondale three
times a week into the early 1940’s. Railcars traveled further south to
Landenberg as deliveries or pick-ups necessitated. However, by this time
partial carload delivery was outsourced to trucking, and little demand remained
south of Avondale for full railcars. In 1942 the line hauled only 23 carloads south
of Avondale. Six delivered fertilizer (probably
carloads of horse manure for mushroom compost) to New Garden Station, and 17 continued
on to Landenberg, including six containing fertilizer, one holding coal, nine
with mill products and one containing agricultural products.[xxvi] The revenue
from this traffic allocated to the portion of the line south of Chatham was only
$36. Simply keeping the track in operating shape cost $4,156.[xxvii]
Sheehan
Brothers, the one remaining business in Landenberg that could have provided the
line with some traffic, received most of the supplies for their lumber and coal
business on the Wilmington and Western Railroad. In the fall of 1942 the
Wilmington and Western filed to abandon the end of their line from Southwood to
Landenberg. Fearing that this abandonment would force the prolongment of their
service to Landenberg, the Pennsylvania Railroad scrambled to petition the
Interstate Commerce Commission to abandon their tracks south of Chatham. The
railroad cited the dearth of traffic and the importance of the scrap metal from
the rails and bridges, valued at $35,000, for the World War II effort. The
Sheehan business, now controlled by Wilson & Brosius after Mr. D. Francis
Sheehan’s sudden death in September 1942, protested but to no avail. Permission
to abandon the tracks was granted in 1943. The Pomeroy and Newark and
Wilmington and Western had reached Landenberg together 70 years before, and in
less than one year, they were gone.
The
Pennsylvania Railroad continued infrequent operation of the 11.5 mile stretch
of the Pomeroy and Newark between Pomeroy and Chatham through the 1950’s when additional
miles of track were torn up south of Doe Run. Trains off loaded cattle at Doe
Run for King Ranch into the 1970’s when the last significant section of the
line disappeared. The one-mile stub serving the industries in Newark lingered
slightly longer, but it too has vanished.
Today all
that remains of the Pomeroy and Newark Railroad are portions of the old track
bed, many of the concrete and stone bridge abutments, and a few of the bridges,
mainly on the northern portion above Doe Run. Development and farming have
erased significant stretches of the grade and even some of the abutments between
Doe Run and Avondale. Because of the major grading required, the railroad’s
short path through New Garden Township is well preserved. Access to the route
is difficult because most of the right-of-way has reverted back to or been sold
to property owners adjacent to the line. Fortunately, large sections of the
abandoned track bed are accessible south of Landenberg as it twists through the
Pennsylvania White Clay Creek Preserve and Delaware’s White Clay Creek State
Park. Many of the parks’ trails follow the grade, which is still coated
with the cinders spewed from the fireboxes of the Pommie Doodle steam trains. Efforts
are underway to use more sections of the line for public paths. The City of
Newark is converting the last few miles of the rail bed into a rail trail, and
New Garden Township has purchased and hopes to use portions of the line north
of Landenberg for trails.
Lifelong New Garden resident, Ben Marsden,
graduate of Haverford College, developed an interest in the Pomeroy and Newark
Railroad while running on the old rail bed. Grandson of Margaret and Pownall
Jones, Marsden shares their curiosity about local history.