Atlantic City

Company History: The ACRR was established in 1889 as a subsidiary of the Philadelphia & Reading to consolidate P&R’s railroad holdings in southern New Jersey. These included the Camden Gloucester & Mt. Ephraim, the Philadelphia & Atlantic City, the Williamstown Railroad, and the Williamstown & Delaware River. In 1901, four more area railroads were merged into the Atlantic City Railroad. These included the Camden County Railroad, the Cape May Delaware Bay & Sewell’s Point, the Ocean City Railroad and the Seacoast Railroad. That brought the ACRR up to 161 miles of route in the Garden State. With the onset of the Great Depression, disaster loomed for the ACRR as they struggled for traffic against the West Jersey & Seashore Railroad, a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Reading and PRR came to an agreement and in 1933 the ACRR leased the WJ&S and changed their name to Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines. Ownership was then split with PRR holding two thirds of the P-RSL and Reading holding the other third.

Successor/Parent History: Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines was launched in 1933 to combine the lines of the Pennsylvania and Reading from the Philadelphia-Camden area to the New Jersey coast at places like Atlantic City and Cape May. There were four parallel lines in this general direction and the traffic was mostly passenger and mostly seasonal. There was just too little business for Pennsy and Reading to fight over so the P-RSL would be a separate railroad jointly owned by PRR and RDG to rationalize the routes. At the time of the launch, P-RSL had 413 route miles, all in the state of New Jersey.

Two of the lines were electrified with 3rd rail and used electric MU cars to haul passengers. These cars also had trolley poles for a short segment in town where the close proximity of grade crossings made operation with 3rd rail impossible. The rest of the operations were behind steam. P-RSL had their own steam fleet that was augmented with power from its parents.

Brief History: The U.S. is a country of 50 states covering a vast swath of North America, with Alaska in the northwest and Hawaii extending the nation’s presence into the Pacific Ocean. Major Atlantic Coast cities are New York, a global finance and culture center, and capital Washington, DC. Midwestern metropolis Chicago is known for influential architecture and on the west coast, Los Angeles' Hollywood is famed for filmmaking.