Last Saturday, while visiting my sisters in the Philadelphia exurbs, I suggested that we drive down to eastern Montgomery County to explore the Pennypack Preserve. As a child, I occasionally rode my old Schwinn 3-speed in that area, before the woods across from the Abington Memorial Hospital June Fete grounds were converted into an ecological trust. The whole area retains its rural and forested nature despite its closeness to the Philadelphia city line.

The day was dreary with intermittent rain as we made our way to the mid-19th c. bridge over the Pennypack Creek to join the Pennypack Trail.

Our destination was the gulch a half mile north of the old stone bridge where, on December 5, 1921, two Philadelphia & Reading Railroad passenger trains collided in a horrific accident which claimed 26 lives and resulted in the prohibition of wooden passenger carriages. The signage provides an excellent overview of the tragedy. I’ve included shots of the gulch and the curve as well as some remaining telegraph poles from the day and the signal semaphore.

I only found out about the tragedy a year ago, and few people in the Philadelphia metro region have ever heard about it.

The old Bryn Athyn station, now repurposed as a post office, was where the engineers at fault received the written instructions from the stationmaster to wait on the siding a hundred meters north to wait for the daily milk train from Newtown to Philadelphia to pass. The engineers assumed that it was safe to return to the main track since they hadn’t read the daily update informing them that an unscheduled express train was a few hundred meters behind the milk train. When the stationmaster saw the train move forward, he ran after it frantically yelling at them to return to the siding, to no avail. Knowing what was about to happen, he called the local fire department and ambulance to head to the gulch.

This video recounts the tragedy in a comprehensive way. The narrator has the classic Philadelphia suburban accent.

Returning to the visitor’s center and our car, the rain picked up a bit. We met two college guys who were fishing. When I asked them if there were trout in the creek, they said no-only crappies. When we saw them later as they headed to their car, they excitedly reported that they had indeed caught a trout and showed us the picture. Since it’s a catch and release creek, the photo is their souvenir. I brought them surprisingly good luck.

As we crossed the meadow I was able to catch a pic of Cairnwood and the top of the Bryn Athyn Cathedral, which I wrote about in 2022. The preserve is a real gem in the midst of the suburbs.