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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 เม.ย. 2019
- A look at the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines and predecessors from the 1930's to the 60's. Also included are brief glimpses of the CNJ's Blue Comet which ran on the PRSL from Winslow Jct. to Atlantic City.
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Great video! My Great-Uncle lived in Atlantic City and commuted to the office in Philly every day. He used to say that after work he would walk to the station, buy a paper and read it on the way home. After reading his paper he would take a nap until the conductor opened the Dutch doors of the cars at Absecon and let the fresh sea air in. He would wake up refreshed and ready for the evening. What a way to travel!
This was like stepping into a time machine, thanks for your hard work on this.
Classy eastern railroading, loved every minute thank you for sharing
That made me weepy for days gone by. My grandparents lived in Newfield. Way back in the day, my mother took the train to Vineland every day for high school. When I stayed there in the summer, and whenever I heard a whistle. I ran out into the middle of Salem Avenue and as far as I could toward the tracks so I could see the trains go by or stop for passengers. My grandfather yelled at me every time when I leapt up during dinner and bolted. The PRSL was the reason I went to work on the railroad.
There was a place that I think was called Fox Feeds (?) that a little switcher worked daily. And the GP38s, flying through with freight. I actually have dreams about those beautiful GP38s and Newfield. In the video, I saw a few electric cars, not sure where, but way before my time there was an electric line there that ran Newfield to to Ocean city. I really wish I'd borrowed my grandfathers wind-up 8mm movie camera and caught some of the action.
To this day, I am unable to find any photos or films of the PRSL in Newfield. If anyone was links or photos to share, I would love to see them. Thank you for this video!!
Fantastic footage from one of the great former railroads that ran through my neck of the woods, South Jersey!
Nice video. I was a block operator on the Seashore Lines from 1970 to 1974 and worked all the block and interlocking stations except Vernon and Alan which were gone before I started.
Great video, indeed! Sadly, much of this rail network is gone today thanks to Conrail and lack of interest in the rail infrastructure in that area of New Jersey.
In the mid-1980s, PRSL Budd RDCs found their way up to Boston and were put to work on the Boston and Maine along with those still lettered for the NYC, NH, B&O, PRR, PC, Reading, and Lehigh Valley, along with some from the CPR and CN. As the railroads were dumping them, the B&M was putting the Budd Liners as we called them to work as coaches pulled behind rebuilt E and F-units called FP10s which were painted with maroon, gold and a pink that we called "Easter Eggs". During this period, I rode Budd RDCs with one trip being PRSL inbound and Boston and Albany outbound home.
An excellent time line video showing both steam, diesel and the RDC. Thanks for all your hard work and the added sound effects were spot on. I really enjoyed this one.
Thanks for posting! Those RDC-1 Phase 1's are my favorite! Used to ride them from Lindenwold to Ocean City in the 70's.
I neglected to mention in my first comment how much I enjoyed seeing the marquee of the Warners Theatre at 0:14 with the lady cyclist going by. That was a beautiful atmospheric house that opened in 1929 as the Warners Embassy Theatre and seated 4,189 patrons and featured a 4 manual 29 rank Wurlitzer Theatre organ. The lobby and auditorium were demolished in the late 1970's for a casino yet the facade still exists and is on the National Register of Historic Places and serves as an entrance to that casino.
This was a nice new surprise. Hasn't been all that much on the PRSL. Love it! I was originally from Haddon Heights and mostly rode 609/610 but also from Haddonfield to/from Camden and Philadelphia, also to/from Ocean City, once to Wildwood. This was one exciting railroad. Whenever back in the area I miss it terribly. If there was service to the Cape May County resorts today I think there would be a few less traffic jams. New Jersey is so short-sighted. The Atlantic City Expressway and Garden State Parkway are very poor "replacements".
Bill Scott don’t forget the North-South Freeway(Parking lot & Walt Whitman Bridge). I lived in Elwood,NJ midway between Egg Harbor City & Hammonton from December 14,1963 to June 21,1969. I used to see quite a bit of PRSL Philadelphia-Atlantic City trains run.
Great memories of my old hometown of Haddonfield when we were kids hanging out in the tunnel that went from one side of the station to the other. Remember the steam and the RDC cars. Then watched as they built the Patco High Speed line and ruined everything. My grandfather was on of the first Reading engineers on the Jersey side of the river.
Thank you for your video of the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Rail Line which served PA and NJ for many years. I'm pretty sure that this brings back so many memories to people in the Mid-Atlantic region. Admired what looked like a silver commuter train (no locomotive). Wonderful video.
Those are (were) RDCs, Rail Diesel Cars. They're the ancestors of modern DMU cars. Budd built almost 400 RDCs between 1949 and 1962. They were used on four continents; some still serve in Canada and possibly elsewhere. Kinda like a rail version of the DC-3, I'd say.
Some of those trains are absolutely FLYING! High speed rail! 2:08
The blue comet too
@Justin Roig these large driver steamers were built over a century ago and could run 70 to 125mph for hours if tracks permitted.
Attaining 80mph today on welded rail with laser inspection is hardly a technological feat considering that.
There is also an illusion of higher speed due to the film being projected at a higher frame rate than at which it was shot. This is a common problem with older 8mm films. If you watch some old home movies the people seem to be moving at super speed. If you slow the frame rate down you can get an annoying flickering effect.
@@fmnut True but the people riding bikes and walking don't seem to be moving at high rates,,,pretty close to the original I would say,,,and I do believe those trains were moving at pretty high speeds,,just my take!
Almost as good as a time machine. Thanks!
Strange how this video brought up memories of Mantua's HO models of Reading engines and American Flyer's S gauge Reading Atlantic. The anthracite roads' engines were favored in the later '30s early '40s for those wide Wooten fireboxes, as even the smallest HO motors were pretty big in those days. I remember seeing a couple of O scale models sitting on the shelvesa above the "back bar" at the Milwaukee Model Shop on Lisbon Avenue in the "Near North Side" in the early '60s. The owner was 2 years older than God and kept inconvenient hours: 2PM to 6PM, six days per week, and one of my friends said, "The guy never rearranges his windows, just moves the old stuff out of the way and plunks the new stuff down." But he had an inventory that couldn't be believed, besides having a machine shop in the back room. Thanks for posting this.
wow! wish this stuff still happened!
Great video, During my fathers era, as, a Reading Engineer o the PRSL.
Great footage! I remember years ago seeing a Budd RDC sitting in Rio Grande just off Rt 47. Must have been around 1970 when I was a kid. Bet it was a great time to be a railfan down there. Also made me think of the train scene early in the movie, The King of Marvin Gardens. Thank you for sharing these here!
Excellent collection of steam and early diesels. We've rode on Budd RDCs in Syracuse from the former Carousel Mall to the Hill at Syracuse University. Also did the RDC in Cape May, NJ. Fun.
I was in the Rite Aid on Oak Ave. in Wildwood this morning and felt the ghosts of the station, K-4s and RDCs and so had to watch this. Good stuff, thanks for sharing!
Gosh, I wish they'd invent a time machine to go back and witness all of this spectacular action.
Absolutely superb, this must have taken many hours of work to compile, edit, dub etc. Very much appreciated.
I still think about all the people traveling in and out of Wildwood everytime I cross through the railroad bridge area in Grassy Sound. So much history just buried under the streets of Wildwood. The 30's to 60's had to be an epic time growing up in that area.
Wildwood was great in the 60s, it was our preferred shore destination over Atlantic or Ocean City
Fantastic video, bravo! My great grandparents honeymooned in AC and took the Blue Comet.
Nice to see a video with thePRSL
Love this! Great to see some PRSL action!
Totaly awesome video,,,love those rdc cars and baldwin diesels,,thank you for sharing this great video
Love it. Just wish there were more identifying the locations.
Not being from the area, I'm not confident I could label all of the locations correctly. Some are self explanatory where signs appear or terminals such as AC and Camden.
@@fmnut Last minute is Wildwood, Oak avenue, headed to the trestle and West Wildwood.
Iknow these places in the video, my father run trains through these places in the 1950's and 60,s so nice to see these memories
Dear Mr. Nut,
Thanks so much for this vid. Even though I have lived the majority of my life on the West Coast, I have always had a chubb for the PRSL.
WOW nicely done VIDEO! It literally is non stop from beginning to end!! I was a bit surprised not to see any of the PRSL RDCs minus there later familiar safety tiger safety. 6 stripes. Very nicely
Thanks**2 for posting this! My grandparents lived in Ocean City and I remember watching the RDCs come in, a few blocks from their house. Great memories, but so sad to see what's there now versus what was.
Fantastic. Thank you.
Thanks for the Blue Comet!!!!!!
Lots of speed on those steamers!
I remember those Budd cars going past my house in Vineland.
I like the stray shopping cart @ 16:07
One of my favorite railroads! Neat
Recognize what looks to be in the early part of this film the South Jersey landscape, like Richland. It doesn't look that much different today and the tracks are still there. Also remember the tracks going across the bay into Ocean City from the south end and running up Haven Avenue to 9th Street the tracks are no longer there but this station has been converted into a bus station and has been restored
Nice to see the Haddonfield Sation that I remember as a kid. Unfortunately it was torn down ('65 or '66) for PATCO. It would have been so easy to move it had anyone been interested.
I regogninize places. In this video from when I was a kid.🤠👍
An odd segway. Whenever I view black and white videos, I bring to mind the comic strip of *Calvin and Hobbes* where Calvin asks his father why old photographs are all in black and white, grainy, and slightly out of focus. Calvin's father's reply, "that's because the world *was* black and white, grainy, and slightly out of focus."
So interesting to see particularly the people, and Woodcrest Station is definitely bigger now
This is a great video. I grew up in Haddonfield a block away from the PRSL's main line and spent a lot of time as a boy watching the steam engines pulling both freight and passenger consists to and from the coast.
In the summers from 1958 thru 1960 during summer breaks from college I worked as a passenger brakeman on the line. Your clips from that era brought back a lot of memories. I recognized at least one of the brakemen in the video, and possibly myself in the clip on the Budd Car exchange at Wildwood Junction.
Thank you for a super piece of nostalgia.
a lot of action!... thanks...
Those steamers could really move!!
Thanks..Good stuff !
Great video, my f as ther fired some of those locomotives back in th 1950's
1:58 two superstars of the rails in one frame!
1:46 has footage of the blue comet
haha i live right next to the old williamstown- glassboro section
All that nice black smoke... I imagine that not much thought given to air pollution in those days... however as a child, we lived in the Pittsburg suberb of Wilmerding, not far from the Pennsy RR, and the soot accumulated rapidly on the windowsills...
Great Wildwood Junction action.
Today only one line survives as it’s the Atlantic City Line which is operated by NJ Transit between Philadelphia and Atlantic City as Ocean City, Wildwood, and Cape May are served by bus.
seriously fascinating stuff there. From those pacifics: man they were motoring - my 5yo though they sounded like a jet plane! - to the RDCs. Is it just me or did they sound like lawnmowers? By the time I was old enough to remember the ones we had in Sydney (Australia) had been demotored. Thanks for posting!
They had 6 cylinder Detroit engines that sounded like a GM bus here in the US.
@@fmnut know that sound. We had those buses too, and they used the Detroit engines on other railmotors from the 1940s.
I also thought they sounded like jets once they passed and you could hear the whooshing sound and roar. Your son is correct!
If you look closely you can see MP54's, fitted with both trolley poles and third rail shoes. You can also see the occasional doodlebug.
A lot changed in only 30 years
Those steamys were rolling.......
This link was getting forwarded all around the train groups. It was the HOT HIT this week. It took a few days for me to watch it. I own the website for www.prslhs.com so I have great interest in PRSL. Highlights for me are the MONSTER 3 unit 21 car passenger train. Anything Oak Ave Wildwood is a favorite. It was good to see REA X29 on some trains confirming I have have them on my trains. Thanks MUCH for posting. it was sincerely appreciated.
Back when speed has no limit. you could just go.
This is absolutely priceless and rarely seen footage, thank you for sharing it. I'm just curious, is the footage, especially the old footage from the 30's, speed corrected?
Not really. If you play with the speed too much it stutters.
@@fmnut Permission to use segments of this video for an upcoming documentary/branch line review video? I will give you credit in the video and link your channel in the description.
@@Pensyfan19 can you give me specific time segments? Some of this is commercial footage used with permission.
@@fmnut I would like to use segments between (but not all of) 0:10 - 2:02, 8:07 - 9:53, and 10:21 - 11:11.
@@Pensyfan19 you very neatly picked out all the footage that is commercial. I will check with the owner and get back to you.
....and a few Budd's for good measure. This is good to come home to, after working ''turd'' shift.
Thanks for posting this, it's interesting footage. You probably are quite aware of this, but the films you're presenting here were shot at silent speed. When they're projected or reproduced at sound speed it has the effect of making the action appear significantly faster than it really is. I say this only to point out to people that the trains they are seeing in these films weren't actually traveling as fast as they appear to be.
The speed problem is not uniform over all film transfers. Generally older 8mm is the worst, while Super 8 is better. Frame rates can be adjusted digitally, but this sometimes results in a jerky appearance. I generally just work with it however it appears. Color correction and adding sound is enough work for me!
@@fmnut Understood. It's certainly an issue of consistency; silent cameras that used spring motor drives often ran at varying speeds. 16mm cameras sometimes were a little better in that regard.Typically they operated btwn 16-18 fps, which is just about fast enough to be above the flicker rate. Even in the realm of commercial silent films of the teens and twenties, the cameraman was frequently told to crank the camera fast enough so that the interval between blackout and exposure remained unnoticeable. The same was true for when those films were then projected. The industry went to 24fps primarily for better sound quality, as sound came in.
2 of those old Budd Seashore Line cars are rotting away in Cape May Court House, unfortunately. They were parked in fully working condition, and now they're vandalized and will probably never run again.
Yes, I rode one back in the 90s. It can be seen on my video "Budd Car Bastions US". Such a shame. Thanks to the Reading & Northern for keeping the RDC alive.
at 01:47 you can see the streamlined Pennsyt K4, and then behind that, pans down, is a GG1! What was she doing on that side of the river, in dark territory?
AAR Master Mechanics convention. I will be doing another video with the full length of the convention footage.
@@fmnut very cool. Your videos never cease to amaze me. I grew up in Reading, and am working on an N-scale RDG layout now - you're videos are helping me so much!!
The treasure is under the big W!!!
Sad to think that all of the people we saw before 6:43 are dead.
That opening scene looks like arriving at the Boardwalk, but I don't think it's Virginia Ave., Atlantic City
I believe it's Georgia Ave. before Convention Hall was built. This shot is earlier than the rest of the footage.
Lpve the Budd cars.👍🤠
Cool to also see a doodle bug in this video.😊
Iregognize Tucahoe water towers great video.
Terrific! What software is used to clean and enhance these films?
It depends on which scene you're talking about. The really clear, sharp B&W clips in the beginning and the later color footage were done using a proprietary process by Pechulis Media. The balance of the B&W steam footage and a few RDC shots were processed using Pinnacle Studio 15, primarily contrast and brightness.
Like the Doodlebug in video
Kind of shocked that the 3768 made it that far east.
Ran these tracks with dirt bikes from Malaga.
At 12:03 is that a FM unit or Baldwin? Long hood forward and no marker lights makes me think "not a Baldwin" but?? Thanks loved the video!
Definitely a Baldwin. PRSL had no FMs. The lack of the characteristic boxy Baldwin markers was due to the units being built to PRR specs, PRR's big Baldwins also lacked them.
Long hood forward has no relevance as most early roadswitchers from all the builders were set up that way. Short hood forward was a rarity until the 1960s.
AS-616 Baldwin I Believe
Y dad fired the last K-4 Into N.wildwood in 1955 .
Every time I see an in-service RDC, I wonder how the Budd Company could have been so successful with that product and such a monumental failure with the successor SPV-2000. Sad.
RDC followed the KISS principle. SPV did not. Much like the engineering of today, too complex.
@@fmnut im a conductor in boston on the commuter rail...so true ..PTC is shit technology
Only VIA still has in service RDCs for Northern Ontario local service, rest are museum fleets or short lines.
Does this trains still exist? Are they in a museum? Because I want to see them in person.
Google Cape May Seashore Line. That's pretty much all that's left.
0:13 Ahh. Atlantic City... some four to five decades before real gambling came to fruition.
Christopher Howell Oh there was plenty of real gambling taking place back then. You just needed to know the password to get in.
@@Shadowfax-1980 Nucky Thompson? Great series on Netflix.
And all this was destroyed for the PATCO single line subway-commuter rail. So unnecessary since decades before the MTA incorporated a narrow gage commuter line into its East Boston subway line.
9:59
are rdc s diesel?
Yes. RDC =Rail DIESEL Car.
The Comets gotta be doing a buck!
Land speed records were set in the 1910s by Camelbacks on those rails !!
🚬😎
The US should rediscover the Budd car. Are there any Budds in operation today?
Yes. Several museums have operable examples. The Reading and Northern in eastern Pennsylvania runs regular excursions with them.
In addition to those that are used on historic lines, VIA Rail has a few in regular revenue service in Canada.
There's one at the RR museum in Duluth, MN.
How about some narration and maps. I have no idea what and where trains are.
I don't do narration. My voice isn't suited for it, and I spend a lot of effort adding audio to the silent films. It would be a shame to spoil that by talking over it. As to maps, a Google search can get you a good map if you are unfamiliar with the railroad. Sorry you are disappointed with my production style.
Wonder why no one ever filmed the crossings? Did they care? Was it taboo???
Most fans of the era were more focused on the trains than the other parts of the rail scene such as signals, crossing protection, etc. If any such does appear in older films it is usually a coincidence.
Seemed to take the diesel's twice as long!
Different film speeds. Also by the later diesel years track speeds were lower due to less money for maintenance.
@@fmnut my father worked for reading and Conrail as a signal maintainer they had a weekly joke working for reading that they would run to the bank before the checks would bounce!
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