The Paoli Local and the Birth of Pennsylvania’s Main Line

Posted by on Mar 11, 2022 in | Comments Off on The Paoli Local and the Birth of Pennsylvania’s Main Line “In the year 1857, when the Columbia Railroad passed into the possession of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company . . . the local travel was very light, very few of the business men of the city having residences out of town,” wrote William Hasell Wilson (1811–1902) in his memoir of life as a railroad engineer. During the rest of the 19th and 20th centuries, Wilson, his family and the Pennsylvania...
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Editor’s Letter

Posted by on Mar 9, 2022 in | Comments Off on Editor’s Letter History begets questions. What would have happened if events unfolded in a different way? How do present circumstances impact progressions from the past? How reliable is the available evidence in providing greater truth about the stories that have come down to us? The questions we ask are often as meaningful as the history itself. One of the most popular traditional stories of the American...
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Where History and Magic Converge: The Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Where History and Magic Converge: The Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania Visitors traveling east of Strasburg on Route 741 in idyllic Lancaster County suddenly encounter a wondrous array of locomotives hard by the road – steam engines, diesels, even an electric. One huge locomotive rests on a massive hundred-foot long turntable. A sign announces Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, beyond which a massive building stands as a memorial, a veritable shrine, to one of...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Archbishop Patrick John Ryan: His Life and Times: Ireland — St. Louis — Philadelphia, 1831–1911 by Patrick Ryan published by AuthorHouse Press, 2010; 357 pages, paper, $11.60 Upon the death of Patrick John Ryan (1831– 1911), Archbishop of Philadelphia for more than a quarter century, church bells throughout the city solemnly tolled to mark the passing of the remarkable Irish-born prelate. Ryan...
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