A rail-fan trip was operated in May 1955 from Philadelphia to Gettysburg over the Pennsylvania and Western Maryland via York. Pennsylvania's K-4, No. 7133 heads up the special near the Centerville Road crossing on the Columbia branch west of Rohrerstown.
Provenance
From box labeled Pennsylvania RR Main Line, Columbia Br., A & S Br.
Landisville's "Railroad House," was in such close proximity to the Pennsylvania's main line tracks that legend has it that the draft from passing non-stop expresses could blow soup from plates in the dining room. Also in this 1909 view is "NV" block station which controlled the cross over of the Pennsylvania's tracks with that of the Reading & Columbia branch of the Reading. The block station in later years was changed from "NV"to "LANDIS" before it was eventually demolished.
Lancaster County's flat, open, fields around Landisville made the Reading's Reading & Columbia Branch an easy vicitim to severe winter weather conditions. The locomotive's big wedge plow doesn't to have helped much in this February 1918 scene. Obviously off the iron with its tender askew the crew is either looking for the wrecker or a rescuing St. Bernard with the traditional keg of brandy.
Published in 1909, this view card shows the Reading station at Landisville on the company's Reading & Columbia branch. Like so many Reading structures, it was designed by the famous Philadelphia architect Frank Furness. It originally served as the station at Cordelia a few miles south of Landisville but after business declined at the Cordelia furnace the structure was moved into Landisville.
The tower operator at "Landis," on a summer morning in 1950 watches the Reading's local freight to Columbia as it crosses the Pennsy main line before doing switching work at Landisville.
The legendary ghost of Sppoky Nook had obviously vanished with the coming of daylight hours. The undergrowth during the mid-summer of 1950 practically hides the pilot of the Reading's No. 1678 as the engineer of teh Columbia freight whistles for the approaching Spooky Nook crossing.
