RAILROAD SIGNALS of the U.S.

 

SEPTA's
Regional Rail (Commuter) Lines
 

 Website Homepage

  SEPTA Homepage

http://www.septa.org


Unlike Baltimore's MARC service, SEPTA runs their commuter trains 7 days a week. 

SEPTA offers a day pass for $15, which allows unlimited riding all day long on all of their lines/systems.

I've left the old route designations here for reference, and just in case you're more familiar with them.

Notice with the old R1 line, there is no longer a destination GLENSIDE, since the Warminster and Doylestown lines both service Glenside.

  R1   Airport Line

  R2   Warminster Line

  R2   Wilmington / Newark Line

  R3   W Trenton Line

  R3   Media / Elwyn Line

  R5   Lansdale / Doylestown Line  

  R5   Paoli / Thorndale Line

  R6   Cynwyd Line

  R6   Manayunk / Norristown Line

  R7   Trenton Line

  R7   Chestnut Hill East Line  

  R8   Chestnut Hill West Line

  R8   Fox Chase Line


A Quick History

SEPTA was created by the Pennsylvania state legislature in 1963 to coordinate a multi-modal transportation system for Philadelphia and its surrounding counties of Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery.

In 1968, SEPTA took over, or acquired, the Philadelphia Transportation Company, aka, PTC.

SEPTA acquired Red Arrow in 1970, and in 1976, Frontier.

Today SEPTA is the 5th largest transit system in the United States, with about 500,000 daily riders making approximately one million trips.  SEPTA is one of the most multi-modal systems in the U.S. with approx 2300 busses, subway cars, commuter rail cars, trolleys, and trolley busses.  All total, they travel around 78 million miles annually on a total of 195 routes with over 9,200 employees.  (Stats and dates from Trolley Driver).

The commuter lines of SEPTA can be traced back to the days of the Pennsylvania and Reading Railroads (and then the Penn Central).  SEPTA took over the regional rail service in 1983.  Back in the "old" days, untill 1984, the two lines had separate terminals in the Center City.  The Pennsy trains terminated at Suburban Station, and the Reading trains terminated at the Reading Terminal.  The Reading Terminal was replaced by the Market East Station, which partially sits under the Reading Terminal, and is part of the Center City Commuter Connection (phew, what a mouthfull!).  This change resulted in a "combining" of the two systems, allowing through train service.

In the old numbering system, each Pennsy line was "paired" with a Reading line, giving the route a path through the Center City.  The lines were numbered R1 through R8, except for the R4 line.  The color coding of the lines was also dropped in July of 2010 when  the route numbers  were dropped.

SEPTA's regional rail service currently has 13 lines (listed above) serving 153 stations.  51 of the stations are in Philadelphia proper, 41 are in Montgomery County, 29 are in Delaware county, 16 are in Bucks county, and 10 are in Chester county.

The old Pennsy lines were:
     the Airport line
     the Chestnut Hill West line
     the Cynwyd line
     the Media/Elwyn line
     the Paoli/Thorndale line
     the Trenton line
     the Wilmington/Newark line

The old Reading lines were:
     the Chestnut Hill East line
     the Fox Chase line
     the Lansdale/Doylestown line
     the Manayunk/Norristown line
     the Warminster line
     the West Trenton line

More info can be found at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEPTA_Regional_Rail
http://thetransitpass.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/new-septa-regional-rail-cars/  article on the new Silverliners



Photo by Sean Lamb, from Google.... taken near Valley Forge PA back in 2005.  Nice Pennsy PL signals in the background!

 


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NEW  02/28/2011
Last Updated: 30-May-2011