This map is part of a 60-page brochure titled “The Reading: Building a Modern Railroad,” published by the company in 1958 to commemorate the company’s 125th anniversary. You can download the entire brochure by clicking the cover below.
Besides the overview map above, the brochure included a page of maps showing the growth of the system between 1825 and 1958. The Reading initially built rails to reach the anthracite coal fields in the upper reaches of the Schuylkill River valley, in direct competition with the Schuylkill Navigation, a system of dams and canals that allowed barge transportation of coal and other goods up and down the river.
I love the mid-century graphic design of this brochure, epitomized by this double-page spread showing the railroad’s control center, which could have been the model for the bridge of the USS Enterprise in Star Trek. The computing power of this massive bank of equipment is hard to estimate, but I am certain that each of us now carries more, in the phones in our pockets.
