Philadelphia Division
The Pennsylvania Railroad’s Philadelphia Division linked vital arteries serving major Northeast Cities with the mainline west to Pittsburgh. With connecting lines from Philadelphia, Camden, Baltimore, Wilmington and New York, freight and passenger trains were routed via separate electrified mainlines to the Harrisburg terminal area.
Freight trains travelled on a series of lines collectively known as the Low Grade from New York and Philadelphia to Thorndale on the mainline, where they converged, splitting again at Parkesburg onto the Atglen & Susquehanna Branch. At Creswell the A&S joins the Columbia & Port Deposit from Baltimore via Perryville entering the historic city of Columbia. From here the line crosses the Susquehanna at Shocks Mills continuing along the former Northern Central accessing the Enola Yards on the west bank the Susquehanna in Harrisburg.
The mainline from Philadelphia follows the original state owned Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad alignment to Lancaster which the PRR took control of in 1857. Direct access to Harrisburg from Lancaster was secured via the Harrisburg Portsmouth, Mt Joy & Lancaster Railroad, which later became the preferred route of the PRR’s fleet of blue ribbon passenger trains.
Harrisburg, the western terminus of the Philadelphia Division was home to a significant passenger terminal and freight yards as well as connections to the mainline west via Rockville, Hagerstown via the Cumberland Valley and Buffalo by way of the Williamsport Line. Major freight classification took place at Enola Yard processing as many as 20,000 freight cars a day during the peak of World War II.