Reading Plymouth Branch (Abandoned)

 railway, abandoned / shut down, historical layer / disappeared object

The Plymouth branch of the Reading Railroad was a freight line that ran between a junction at the Reading's Main Line (now SEPTA Lansdale/Doylestown line) at Oreland and another junction at its Philadelphia-Reading passenger line (now SEPTA Manayunk/Norristown line) at Conshohocken. This branch was mainly used to serve the many lime kilns that were once operating in the area.

As the lime kilns and other heavy industry began to disappear and housing/retail developments cropped up in their place, freight traffic began to dry up on the line. The line was finally abandoned by Conrail around 1980 and the majority of the track was gone by the early 1990s. Today, only the tracks that make up the Oreland junction/wye remain; some of the right-of-way is rail-trail, while vast segments of the rest of the line have been completely obliterated.