West Chester Branch
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The Pennsylvania Railroad & Penn Central West Chester Branch is a passenger and freight rail line that connected with the Philadelphia-Washington Main Line at the Arsenal Junction near the University of Pennsylvania to the Philadelphia-Chicago Main Line near Frazer, Pennsylvania.
[edit] History
Opened as the Philadelphia and West Chester Railroad in the 1840s, the line would later be acquired by the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad less than five years later. Since the PWB's acquisition by the Pennsylvania Railroad, the line served as a commuter rail line between Philadelphia, Harrisburg, and West Chester, the county seat of Chester County. In the 1920s, the PRR, after successfully completing electrification projects on the Paoli and Chestnut Hill lines, electrified both its Philadelphia-Washington Main Line to Wilmington and the West Chester Branch out to West Chester. In 1972-73, with washouts on the Chester Creek and Wawa Branches, along with the need to keep commuter rail operating, which survived the floods caused by Hurricane Agnes, the Penn Central abandoned the line north of West Chester, in which some of the right-of-way can still be seen in places, and at the same time, removed the tracks at some of the passing sidings which were used to repair the tracks.
After the formation of Conrail in 1976, operations and ownership of the West Chester Branch was ceeded to the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) in 1983, in which it operated the line as its R3-Media/West Chester service until 1986, when service was truncated to Elwyn. As of 2007, SEPTA operates commuter rail operations on the line between Philadelphia and Elwyn, while the Borough of West Chester operates a scenic excursion train on weekends between West Chester and Glen Mills. Overnight freight service, which is very infrequent, is primarily used by Amtrak to obtain track ballast from a quarry in Glen Mills. SEPTA currently has plans of restoring rail service west of Elwyn to a park & ride station Wawa, although local groups have lobbied to both SEPTA and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to restore commuter rail service back out to West Chester, mainly due to the surge of the local population since the service was cut back in 1986.
