Passenger Trains > Only in Philadelphia!

In 1992 SEPTA "temporarily" abandoned trolley service on Route 23- 11th-12th-Germantown Ave.

Today PennDOT announced that it would finally rebuild and repave Germantown Ave between Allen Lane and Mermaid Lane. New tracks and overhead will be installed as part of the project!

Only comment from SEPTA spokesman, Richard Maloney, was "We are not closing the door"

Huh?

The long, sad saga of the SEPTA "surface lines" continues. So PennDOT will pay for new track and catenary for an unused line. Nothing too surprising there.

The original abandonment of lines 15, 23, and 56 came about because SEPTA demolished the carbarn that served them. That meant that PCCs needing heavy overhauls had to be trucked to and from Woodland Shop, because although the 15 and 23 cross at grade in North Philadelphia, and there are track connections from the 15 (Girard) line to Woodland, there was not then any physical connection at the crossing.

But wait, it gets better. In the mid-1990s, SEPTA's light rail director came up with the idea of a "holiday trolley" on part of the 23 line through Center City. For this, SEPTA built a new block-long turnback track just north of Vine Street, AND a set of connections to the 15 line where it crossed the 23 on Girard Ave. That trackage is all still there, even though the "holiday trolley" only lasted a couple of years, as did another attempt at using the 23 trackage to run service from Center City to the zoo using the new connections at Girard.

But it gets even better. All those trolleys were running from Woodland Shop in SW PHL, with a put-in time of about an hour or more. When SEPTA finally decided they would indeed reactivate the 15-Girard line, they had to re-convert several bays of the bus depot at the west end of the line to handle trolleys, and had to re-install track that had been paved over in a street adjacent to the barn. So now we have trolleys on Girard once again, all those new connections, and the 23 trackage silent and unused. You gotta wonder.

To continue this tale, my train grandson and I rode the Chestnut Hill Ave. portion of the line between the Germantown Car Barn and Bethlehem Pike about three years ago in some PCC cars that also had to be trucked overland from Elmwood Car Barn!