Abandoned Oaks PA-Phoenixville Railroad

tm05

I ALSO HAVE TS12!!!
around Oaks, PA, there is an abandoned (I think) branch line that stems off of Amtrak (I think) and at the end, has some old locomotives sitting out on a siding. After the siding, the line turns 90 degrees north and continues for a long time. There is even a bridge over Hollow Road. It more or less disappears into the trees, only reappearing on a small girder bridge, until it comes to Mont Clare, PA, and crosses this beautiful curved stone trestle, which also crosses the Schuylkill River, coming into Phoenixville. The part of the line has looked like it was originally double track, then single track until its abandonment. At Devault, it crosses under the PA Turnpike, until it ends very abruptly (according to Google Maps) in Sidley, PA, with what seems to be a small abandoned yard. Unless I missed something, then that is all that this line leads to, with many former industries along the line.

If anyone knows what this is or was, please let me know!

Trainman2005/MatthewB.
 
Here's some locations on Google Maps:

Beginning of the line, connection to mainline : https://www.google.com/maps/place/T...2174672957ecdf!8m2!3d40.1238039!4d-75.4581173

Oaks, display of old trains : https://www.google.com/maps/place/T...2174672957ecdf!8m2!3d40.1238039!4d-75.4581173

Stone Viaduct at Mont Clare, pa : https://www.google.com/maps/place/T...2174672957ecdf!8m2!3d40.1238039!4d-75.4581173

cool old overhead crossing signal, most if not all rr crossings are paved over now : https://www.google.com/maps/@40.113...4!1sxj0SBvyJhmmD6SIls17qkQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

cool bridge over PA-29 : https://www.google.com/maps/@40.106...=198.0867&pitch=0&thumbfov=100!7i13312!8i6656

As seen, the bridge goes on for quite some direction : https://www.google.com/maps/place/T...2174672957ecdf!8m2!3d40.1238039!4d-75.4581173

Here's something wierd. a small section of track, completely independent, with some sort of paving, I think. THis is also where the line passes under the PA turnpike. A crossing just after the PAT still has the tracks showing through! Foreshadowing? : https://www.google.com/maps/place/T...2174672957ecdf!8m2!3d40.1238039!4d-75.4581173

Here is where it shows there is a junction. To see it, you will have to go into map mode : https://www.google.com/maps/place/T...2174672957ecdf!8m2!3d40.1238039!4d-75.4581173

Once you go down the junction, and follow two curves, you will find the small yard mentioned earlier in my post, plus another few spurs. Again, you might have to go into map mode or zoom in to see the tracks. : https://www.google.com/maps/place/T...2174672957ecdf!8m2!3d40.1238039!4d-75.4581173

If anyone even has a guess as to what this is, or was, please don't hesitate to tell me. I saw the original displayed locomotives while at a convention there, and my curiosity never stopped.
Thanks,
 
Without detailed old topo maps, this line will eventually fade away being overtaken by forest overgrowth, and will eventually totally torn out by urban sprawl land development ... it will be as if it never existed, and will most likely not be reproduced in Trainz by anyone ... in PA there was a spider web of rail lines, and in most areas there was a rail line every 5 miles ... Today only a handful exist ... All are gone

https://www.topoquest.com/place-detail.php?id=1182847

It once went all over the place, and ended in Green Lane PA

Back in yesteryear RR's found profit hauling timber, coal, iron ore, marble, granite and stone rocks ... Nowadays, hardly any of those products are used, or are depleted in urban areas, or are not worth maintaining a railroad infrastructure in order to haul next to worthless materials

Who knows ... most old RR lines had a passenger train where folks would travel 2 days to the Reading Terminal Market to pick up supplies ... Nowadays they think just nothing of driving 50 miles at 60 mph to go to the grocery store or mall ... And trucking has wiped out RR's

The interchange was Perkiomen Junction on the Reading railroad
 
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Oh, cool! Also, I must correct you. I'm thinking of doing a version in Trainz, which isn't saying much, I have a lot of unfinished projects, but I might at least get it started. Thanks for a reply!
Thanks a lot,
 
I recommend looking at the area in the viewer on Historic Aerials http://www.historicaerials.com. With that website, you can not only view various topographic maps, but also photos and current maps of the same area. The old photos are really interesting because you can sometimes see consists on sidings as well as the expanse and in some cases good details too of the area. The topographic maps will give you the owner of the line and by comparing newer and older maps and photos, you can determine roughly when the line was closed.
 
I looked in to this Route a few years back, as I used to drive dump truck out of Devault Quarry/Ashphalt plants, up and down Rt. 29 between Phoenixville and Malvern/Fraizer .. Even up to Oaks off 422, at The Dump, which is where I think you saw the Engines sitting.

From What I recall, it was a branch of the PRR (possibly the Reading) that served the area, but the termination in Sidley, aka; Fraizer/Malvern was an Industrial/Warehouse complex (much as it is now, only really having been modernized in the 1970s/80s, then turned into Residentual/Commercial spaces in the 90s-2000s), not really a "yard" per say.

I abandoned the project, just as the RR did, due to the high number of custom high-trestles I'd have to produce to accurately reproduce the line. Unless you drive Route 29 from Devault to Phoenixville, you can not really appreciate just how "mountainous" the area is. Search around, there is a website somewhere that details the several abandoned Tunnels on the line also.
 
If you follow the line West, it becomes the "Chester Valley Trail" and runs all the way west to Whiteland/Downingtown, where it also served the HUGH quarry on Quarry road, then continued west to join the PRR main in Downingtown. It may have been actually called the Phoenixville Branch.
 
If you follow the line West, it becomes the "Chester Valley Trail" and runs all the way west to Whiteland/Downingtown, where it also served the HUGH quarry on Quarry road, then continued west to join the PRR main in Downingtown. It may have been actually called the Phoenixville Branch.

Correction: Looking at the old maps, the line the OP is looking at is the PRR Frazer Branch, which crosses the Reading line near Swedsford Road (this appears to be the line that is now the Chester Valley Trail), then loops back east to join the PRR main in Frazer. The line that went to Downingtown was the Philidelphia and Chester, which joined the Reading in the same area. It is unclear if the P&C ever joined the Frazer Branch.
 
That area is extremely hilly. A storm chasing friend of mine was in a terrible accident due to losing his brakes in his truck he was driving and ended up crashing down many hills and slopes before coming to a stop at the bottom of a very steep slope. This put him out of business as a dentist because of the neck injuries he suffered from, and he was forced to retire.

Anyway, that would make an interesting route to model someday using TransDEM-generated terrain rather than the old inaccurate HOG terrain.
 
update

Good evening. This line that goes toward Downington, PA had a really neat PRR Victorian Station at Oaks, PA. I know this as my grandfather was the station agent there and he and my grandmother lived over, in and behind the station. When visiting them during the summers, it was really neat to watch the trains go by the station from their bedroom window. I think -- somewhere I have a picture of the station. If I can find it, I will post it. Beautifully maintained, the roadbed consisted of two (2) tracks and a siding for a freight station.

I always found it neat that one of the "perks" my grandparents got by living in the station was a free dump load of coal every fall/winter from the railroad....

Larry
 
So you are actually mistaking two different lines as belonging to the same railroad.

The tracks at Oaks with the equipment parked on it are the old Reading Perkiomen Branch, which ran from Perkiomen Junction just north of the Valley Forge Station all the way to Emmaus where it connected to the Crossline.

The tracks that lead to Phoenixville, with all of the bridges, was the old Pennsylvania Railroad Schuylkill Valley Branch, a poorly thought out attempt by the PRR to put the Reading out of business by paralleling its mainline from Philadelphia all the way up to Pottstown, PA. The vast majority of this line is now gone, replaced by the Schuylkill River Rail Trail, which runs from Philly to Phoenixville as well as Hamburg to just above Port Clinton. There are also some sections that are walkable from Cressona, PA to Pottsville, and Saint Clair to Frackville. The large and elegant Manayunk Viaduct is the start of this line. At Phoenixville there is a secondary branch between the PRR mainline to Harrisburg and the Schuylkill Valley branch called the Frazer branch.

The Reading Chester Valley branch that was mentioned ran from Downington to Bridgeport, PA and is now the Chester Valley trail.

The switch that connected the Perk to the Skook that is in place at Oaks currently was not there until NS took over the line.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schuylkill_Branch#/map/0

https://www.abandonedrails.com/perkiomen-branch
 
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