Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines: Map, Roster, History

Last revised: September 23, 2026

The Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines was the truce. For fifty years the Pennsylvania and the Reading each kept a railroad from Camden to the New Jersey shore, and each tried to beat the other to Atlantic City. On June 25, 1933 the state and the Interstate Commerce Commission made them one operation. The Pennsylvania took two-thirds of the stock. The Reading kept one-third. The company that carried the name, from July 15, 1933, was the old Atlantic City Railroad, with the Pennsylvania’s West Jersey & Seashore leased to it. Camden was the office. The trains ran to Atlantic City, Ocean City, Wildwood, and Cape May, and the freights ran to Millville, Bridgeton, Salem, and the DuPont works at Deepwater.

The shore business that had built both railroads was already shrinking when the ink dried. The Delaware River Bridge had opened on July 1, 1926, and a family that once rode a ferry to a Camden terminal could drive. Passenger revenue on the two lines fell from $11 million in 1925 to $2.9 million in 1932. Freight fell from $6.5 million to $3.27 million. The Seashore Lines still fielded a summer timetable that was one of the busiest commuter and excursion operations in the East, then watched the Parkway and the Atlantic City Expressway take the rest. Conrail received the property on April 1, 1976. The last Seashore train into Atlantic City, a Budd railcar out of Lindenwold, ran on June 30, 1982.

Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines Baldwin AS-16 6014 arriving at Haddonfield, New Jersey, with train 1001 on September 2, 1965

Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines AS-16 #6014 arriving at Haddonfield, New Jersey, with train 1001 on September 2, 1965. Roger Puta photo. American-Rails.com collection.

On this page: At a glance · Two lines to the same beach · The bridge, and one company · Third rail · The summer timetable · Baldwins, GP38s, and the Budd cars · Conrail, and what is left

At a glance

Item	Detail
Railroad	Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines. Reporting mark PRSL
Headquarters	Camden, New Jersey
Owners	Pennsylvania Railroad, two-thirds. Reading Company, one-third
How it was formed	New Jersey Board of Public Utilities order, March 4, 1931. Interstate Commerce Commission approval June 10, 1933, effective June 25, 1933. The West Jersey & Seashore was leased to the Atlantic City Railroad. That company was renamed the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines on July 15, 1933
Operated	June 25, 1933–April 1, 1976
Earlier railroad	Camden & Atlantic, chartered March 19, 1852. First trains to Atlantic City, July 4, 1854
Where it ran	South Jersey. Camden to Atlantic City by two inherited routes, one through Haddonfield and Winslow Junction, the other through Woodbury and Newfield. Cape May, Ocean City, and Wildwood. Millville, Bridgeton, Salem, and Penns Grove
Track	715 miles in 1950, yards, spurs, and sidings included. Standard gauge
Electrification	Inherited from the West Jersey & Seashore. 650 volts, direct current, third rail and overhead wire. Multiple-unit service Newfield–Atlantic City ended September 26, 1931. The last Seashore electric ran September 8, 1949
Steam	Pennsylvania engines, maintained by the Pennsylvania. In 1941: ten E6s Atlantics, twelve class H Consolidations, five class B switchers, with K4s Pacifics and a Reading Pacific as needed
Diesel	Baldwin and Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton, 1950–1956, then ten EMD GP38s in 1967 and 1969. Twelve Budd RDC-1s, 1950–51
Conveyed	Conrail, April 1, 1976. Last Atlantic City passenger train, June 30, 1982

Two lines to the same beach

Atlantic City was a railroad town before it was a city of any size. The Camden & Atlantic was chartered on March 19, 1852, and on July 4, 1854 its first trains covered the nearly straight run from Camden to the island. The West Jersey Railroad, chartered in February 1853, took the other job: south from Camden through Woodbury and Glassboro toward Millville, Bridgeton, Salem, and, by 1867, Cape May. In May 1896 the Pennsylvania gathered those companies, the Camden & Atlantic included, into the West Jersey & Seashore.

The Reading came later and built faster. In 1876 the Philadelphia & Atlantic City Railway laid about 55 miles of three-foot-gauge track from Camden to the shore in a single construction season. The Camden, Gloucester & Mount Ephraim, chartered in June 1873, was another narrow-gauge line into the Gloucester industrial towns. The Reading took control, standard-gauged the track in 1884, and on April 1, 1889 folded its South Jersey properties into one subsidiary, the Atlantic City Railroad. From Kaighn’s Point in Camden the Reading had its own ferry to Philadelphia, its own double track, and its own station at the Boardwalk end of the run. Between 1901 and 1932 it gathered the branches that reached Ocean City, the Sea Isle line, Wildwood, and Stone Harbor.

The Pennsylvania answered with speed of its own, and in 1906 with electricity. The West Jersey & Seashore strung 650-volt direct current over the Camden–Atlantic City main and down the Woodbury line toward Millville. Third rail lay on the private right-of-way. Overhead wire took over where the tracks ran in a street. Multiple-unit cars made a commuter railroad out of what had been an excursion line.

The Reading’s answer was the camelback Atlantic. The early fliers were Vauclain compounds. Nos. 1026–1029 came from Baldwin in 1896 and 1898, and No. 1027 was already timed in the high sixties on a heavy train in August 1897. On July 20, 1904 the railroad put a new one on train 25, a class P-4c 4-4-2, No. 334, with five cars, out of Kaighn’s Point for Atlantic City. The 55.5 miles took 43 minutes, an average of 77.4 mph. Winslow Junction to Meadows Tower, 29.3 miles, took 20 minutes, an average of 87.9. On the short stretch between Egg Harbor and Brigantine Junction the train was reported at 115 mph. The timed run, not the peak figure, is what made the Atlantic City Railroad’s reputation. Both companies advertised the same beach. A passenger chose a ferry slip, a Camden terminal, and a railroad, and the two timetables were written to beat each other.

1941 map of the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines in southern New Jersey, including the Atlantic Division

The Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines in 1941, including the Atlantic Division. The two inherited mains are both still on the map: Camden through Haddonfield and Winslow Junction, and Camden through Woodbury and Newfield. Author’s work.

The bridge, and one company

The Delaware River Bridge, the span later named for Benjamin Franklin, opened on July 1, 1926. It did what fifty years of parallel timetables could not. A driver no longer needed either ferry. Bus lines used the same bridge. By 1932 the two shore railroads together were taking in about a quarter of the passenger dollars they had taken in 1925, and about half the freight. On March 4, 1931 the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities ordered them to combine. The Interstate Commerce Commission approved the plan on June 10, 1933, effective June 25.

The paper was a lease, not a dissolution. The West Jersey & Seashore was leased to the Atlantic City Railroad. The Pennsylvania received 66 percent of the stock, the two-thirds share that matched its share of the property, and the Reading kept the rest. On July 15, 1933 the Atlantic City Railroad changed its name to the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines, the lease moved with the name, and the new company was given its own general manager. It came off the Pennsylvania’s Atlantic Division, which kept the line up the New York & Long Branch toward Bay Head. The West Jersey & Seashore stayed alive as the leased owner of its track. South Jersey railroading, from that July, was one timetable.

The first summer did not yet match the map the lawyers had drawn. The plan was to put Atlantic City on the old Pennsylvania iron, the straighter road through Haddonfield and Winslow Junction, and to put Ocean City and Cape May on the old Reading. The Atlantic City terminal that was going to be kept was the Reading’s, and the connecting tracks were not finished, so through the summer of 1933 the Atlantic City expresses ran on the ex-Reading line. Cape May trains used the ex-Reading station. The Pennsylvania’s own Cape May terminal, and its Ocean City track, were given up at the start. Buses covered the gap from 51st Street in Ocean City down to Sea Isle City for that season. Once the connections were in, the lasting passenger route to Atlantic City was the former Pennsylvania line, and the former Reading line carried the Cape May and Ocean City trains, with a great deal of duplicated track abandoned in 1933 and 1934.

A few branches were already gone, or went at the same moment. The Philadelphia, Marlton & Medford, a short West Jersey line off Haddonfield, was abandoned in the fall of 1931, two years before the Seashore Lines existed. The Stone Harbor Railroad had been taken into the Atlantic City Railroad in 1932.

Third rail

The Reading lines in South Jersey were steam railroads. Every mile of electric territory the Seashore Lines inherited was Pennsylvania work from 1906: 650 volts, direct current, third rail on the open line and overhead wire in the streets, on the Camden–Atlantic City main and on the route through Woodbury and Newfield toward Millville.

It did not all survive to 1933. Multiple-unit service between Newfield and Atlantic City ended on September 26, 1931. The piece the new company actually operated under wire was the Camden–Millville commuter railroad. Gas-electric cars covered the outer runs. No. 400 was a Brill car of 1926, Pennsylvania 4635 before it came south, class OEW250A. No. 401 was a Pullman-Brill car of 1929, Pennsylvania 4654, class OEG350B, with two 175-horsepower engines. Both were retired on May 6, 1952, after the Budd cars had arrived.

The electric cars themselves were a mixed fleet, Pennsylvania MP54 steel coaches and a larger number of older wooden MU trailers. On October 20, 1948 the state ordered the wooden cars out of service. That fall the remaining electric trains were cut back to Glassboro. The last of the third rail and the overhead wire came down on September 8, 1949. South Jersey’s electric railroad had lasted forty-three years.

The summer timetable

What replaced the rivalry, for a while, was volume. By the early 1940s the summer card listed 176 passenger trains a day. One hundred eleven of them left Philadelphia, either off the Market Street ferry for a Camden terminal or out of Broad Street Station on the Pennsylvania and across the river. The trains handled more than 50,000 people a day. Al Rung, writing in Trains in June 1948, put the wartime peak at 100,000. The straight road from Camden to Atlantic City, about 58 miles, was timed in 52 minutes, with the fast trains held to 80 mph. It was no longer the 1904 race. It was still a railroad that assumed a passenger wanted to be on the Boardwalk the same morning.

The names came in layers. The Atlantic City Railroad had been christening trains since the early 1920s: the Boardwalk Flyer and the Rocket eastbound, the Quaker City Express and the William Penn Express westbound, from the April 30, 1922 card. The Seashore Lines kept the Boardwalk Flyer. On September 26, 1937 it named the parlor-car trains as a fleet, most of them for the water. Barnacle Bill Special, Boardwalk Arrow, Cruiser, Dolphin, Navigator, Sea Hawk, Skipper, and a long list of cousins ran between late June and Labor Day, with a thinner set of names through the winter because Atlantic City did not close. Parlor cars came off as a war measure at the end of the 1942 season, and the names came off with them. The Boardwalk Flyer made its last named trip on September 26, 1942.

One name came back. The Sea Breeze, trains 1001 and 1026, was a year-round Philadelphia–Atlantic City train from June 25, 1950. The name, though not always the train, was dropped in the off-season for several of those years. Its last trip was October 28, 1961. From New York, the train that used these tracks was the Nellie Bly. The Jersey Central’s Blue Comet came down its own Southern Division to Winslow Junction and finished the trip to Atlantic City on the Seashore Lines. The Comet’s last run was September 28, 1941.

The Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines emblem. Author’s work.

The engines were Pennsylvania property in all but the lettering. The 1933 agreement put the locomotive fleet in the hands of the Pennsylvania’s motive-power department, which is why a Seashore diesel later carried a Pennsylvania class code. A. C. Kalmbach, writing the railroad up for Trains in August 1941, counted ten E6s Atlantics, twelve class H Consolidations, and five class B six-wheel switchers, with a K4s Pacific, or a Reading class G Pacific, borrowed when the summer required it. Freight in the war years was a smaller railroad than the passenger timetable suggested. About eighteen regular freights a day covered the glass at Millville, the produce, the coal into the shore towns, and the chemical plant at Deepwater.

Baldwins, GP38s, and the Budd cars

Eddystone was across the river. The Pennsylvania’s preferred diesel builder in those years was Baldwin, and the Seashore Lines bought nothing else until Baldwin was gone. The first six, delivered in April 1950, were DRS-4-4-1500 road-switchers, Nos. 6000–6005, construction numbers 74752–74757, class BS-15ms. They were the last of that model Baldwin built, completed between April 14 and April 29, and they carried Westinghouse 370G traction motors. One S-8 switcher, No. 6006, followed in May 1951. Then came the AS-16 road-switchers and the S-12 switchers, in 1953 and, for the last six switchers, April 1956. The paint was the Pennsylvania’s Brunswick green, dark enough that a clean engine looked black.

The passenger cars changed first. A coal strike and the age of the P70 coaches pushed the railroad toward Budd’s Rail Diesel Car. Twelve RDC-1s, M-402 through M-413, arrived between September 1950 and June 1951, at a cost of about $1.7 million, in place of another rebuilding of P70s. They were assigned to the Cape May trains, where a car could be cut off at Tuckahoe or Wildwood Junction and finish the branch as its own train. Two of them, M-404 and M-412, were destroyed in the Camden shop fire of February 16, 1958. A Budd demonstrator filled in. The ten that remained were the last passenger equipment the railroad owned.

Road No.	Builder	Model	Class	Serial	Built	Notes
6000–6005	Baldwin	DRS-4-4-1500	BS-15ms	74752–74757	April 1950	Completed April 14–29. Westinghouse 370G motors. The railroad’s first diesels
6006	BLH	S-8	BS-8	75253	May 1951	To Conrail 8353
6007–6010	BLH	AS-16	BS-16ms	75804–75807	March 1953
6011–6016	BLH	AS-16	BS-16ms	75850–75855	March–April 1953	6014, serial 75853, is the Haddonfield engine in the photographs
6017–6021	BLH	S-12	BS-12	75930–75934	June–July 1953	To Conrail 8343–8347
6022–6023	BLH	AS-16	BS-16m	75979–75980	November 1953
6024–6027	BLH	AS-16	BS-16ms	75975–75978	November 1953
6028–6033	BLH	S-12	BS-12m	76126–76131	April 1956	To Conrail 8348–8352. The last Baldwins
2000–2004	EMD	GP38	EF-20A	33797–33801	December 1967	To Conrail 7660–7664
2005–2009	EMD	GP38	EF-20A	34752–34756	March 1969	To Conrail 7665–7669. Bought for the Beesley’s Point coal trains

Road No.	Builder	Type	Class	Built	Notes
400	Brill	Gas-electric, 250 hp	OEW250A	September 1926	Ex-Pennsylvania 4635. Retired May 6, 1952
401	Pullman-Brill	Gas-electric, 350 hp	OEG350B	April 1929	Ex-Pennsylvania 4654. Two 175 hp engines. Retired May 6, 1952
M-402–M-413	Budd	RDC-1		September 1950–June 1951	Twelve cars, about $1.7 million. M-404 and M-412 burned at the Camden shop, February 16, 1958. M-407 is the car in the photograph below

By the late 1960s the Baldwins were aging out of spare parts. Baldwin had left the locomotive business in 1956. A new generating station at Beesley’s Point was about to take several 90-car coal trains a week, and the Seashore Lines went to Electro-Motive for ten GP38s, Nos. 2000–2004 in December 1967 and 2005–2009 in March 1969, class EF-20A. They were the only second-generation diesels the company bought, and they were the engines Conrail inherited in number series 7660–7669.

Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines AS-16 6014 with train 1001 at the Haddonfield station on September 2, 1965

AS-16 #6014 with train 1001 at Haddonfield the same day, September 2, 1965. The Sea Breeze name on trains 1001 and 1026 had ended in 1961. Roger Puta photo. American-Rails.com collection.

The track ahead of Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines Budd RDC M-407 at Camden, New Jersey, on September 2, 1965

Looking ahead from Budd RDC M-407 at Camden, New Jersey, September 2, 1965. Roger Puta photo. American-Rails.com collection.

Conrail, and what is left

The highways finished the excursion business the 1926 bridge had opened. The Garden State Parkway went down the shore in the mid-1950s. The Atlantic City Expressway, opened in 1964 and 1965, was laid on the same straight corridor the camelbacks had used. The New Jersey Turnpike, completed in 1952, crossed the western end of the map. Passenger trains came off in pieces. Service into the Camden terminal ended on January 14, 1966. In 1969 PATCO opened its line to Lindenwold on the old right-of-way through Haddonfield, and that October the Seashore Lines ended its own passenger service west of Lindenwold. What remained was a state-supported RDC operation from the Lindenwold station to Atlantic City, with summer cars for Cape May and Ocean City that split at Tuckahoe.

The owners failed on either side of the subsidiary. Penn Central went into bankruptcy on June 21, 1970. The Reading followed on November 23, 1971. The Seashore Lines had no receivership of its own. On April 1, 1976 the property passed to Conrail with the rest of the two estates. Conrail kept the freight, including the Beesley’s Point coal, and the state kept the RDCs on the Lindenwold–Atlantic City card. Cape May and Ocean City passenger service ended in October 1981. On June 30, 1982 the last two Lindenwold trains, Nos. 127 and 129, went south. M-410, running as train 129, was the last Seashore train into Atlantic City. Regular rail passenger service to that terminal had started on July 4, 1854.

Trains returned to the route. Amtrak opened a Philadelphia–Atlantic City service on May 23, 1989, and took it off on April 1, 1995. NJ Transit’s Atlantic City Line began local service on September 17, 1989 and still uses the old Pennsylvania alignment through Lindenwold. PATCO still runs the inner end, Camden to Lindenwold. Freight on the surviving branches has passed through Conrail Shared Assets and on to short lines: Cape May Seashore Lines on the lower Cape May branch, SMS Rail Lines, the Southern Railroad of New Jersey, and the Winchester & Western. The two-railroad race is gone. The right-of-way of the straighter one is still how southern New Jersey reaches Philadelphia by rail.

Sources

Pennsylvania Railroad Technical & Historical Society, Christopher T. Baer chronology, 1933. ICC approval June 10, effective June 25. The lease of the West Jersey & Seashore to the Atlantic City Railroad, the 66 percent stock interest, the July 15 rename, the first summer’s reversed routing, and the revenue figures for 1925 and 1932.
Baer, Christopher T. “Named Trains of the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines and Predecessors.” September 8, 2009. The 1922 Atlantic City Railroad names, the September 26, 1937 nautical fleet, the September 1942 withdrawal, and the Sea Breeze of June 25, 1950–October 28, 1961.
Kalmbach, A. C. “Penn-Reading Seashore.” Trains, August 1941. The 1941 steam count and the shape of the new company.
Rung, Al. “Three Months Feast, Nine Months Famine.” Trains, June 1948. Wartime peak of about 100,000 riders a day.
West Jersey & Seashore electrification record. 650-volt direct current from 1906. Newfield–Atlantic City multiple-unit service ended September 26, 1931. Wooden MU cars ordered off October 20, 1948. Last electric operation September 8, 1949.
Kirkland, John F. The Diesel Builders, Volume Three: Baldwin Locomotive Works. Pasadena: Interurban Press, 1994. Baldwin construction numbers, including DRS-4-4-1500s 74752–74757. The production list is also on the DRS-4-4-1500 page.
The Diesel Shop, Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines roster, revised January 15, 2022, drawing on Extra 2200 South (September–October 1969) and notes from Tom Berry. AS-16, S-12, and GP38 serials, and the Conrail renumbers.
Locobase, class P-1b (1026–1029) and class P-4c. No. 1027’s August 1897 timing, and the P-4c engines of 1904.
Froio, Michael. “By Rail to the Boardwalk.” The RDC purchase, PATCO and the October 1969 cutoff west of Lindenwold, the 1981 and 1982 passenger endings, and the 1989 Amtrak and NJ Transit restorations.

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