Reading Railroad Timetables (August, 1952)

Published: April 17, 2026

Featured here is the Reading's complete listing in the August, 1952 edition of "The Official Guide Of The Railways." While the railroad was no longer at its most profitable and anthracite business was in decline the company was nevertheless still doing relatively well financially. At the time it still maintained a system totaling 1,337 miles, based almost entirely in central/eastern Pennsylvania.

The Reading Railroad began as the Philadelphia and Reading Rail Road, chartered on April 4, 1833, to haul anthracite coal from Pennsylvania’s Schuylkill Valley mines to Philadelphia markets. Construction paralleled the Schuylkill River; the first segment from Reading to Norristown opened in 1838, the full line to Philadelphia in December 1839, and the extension to Pottsville in 1842—forming a 93-mile main line that became one of America’s earliest double-tracked railroads.

Profitable from the start, the railroad dominated coal traffic by the 1860s. Under aggressive president Franklin B. Gowen (1869–1881), it expanded dramatically, leasing or buying nearly 100 smaller lines to reach Harrisburg, Allentown, and New Jersey ports. In 1871 Gowen created the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company, turning the railroad into the world’s first major conglomerate and controlling over 40 percent of U.S. anthracite reserves. This vertical integration brought enormous wealth but crushing debt, triggering receiverships in 1880 and 1886. Labor strife peaked during the 1877 Great Railroad Strike when militia and company police clashed with workers in Reading, killing at least ten in what became known as the Reading Railroad Massacre.

Reorganized in 1893 as the Reading Company, the railroad opened its landmark Reading Terminal in Philadelphia that same year. It thrived as a strategic “bridge line” in the early 20th century—part of the Alphabet Route linking Chicago to New York—while electrifying commuter routes and modernizing shops. Post-World War II, however, declining coal demand, truck competition, and burdensome regulations eroded revenues. The company filed for bankruptcy in 1971; on April 1, 1976, its rail assets were folded into Conrail.Today the Reading’s legacy lives on in preserved locomotives, heritage museums, and its immortal fame as the orange “Reading Railroad” property in the board game Monopoly.