The Wanamaker, Kempton & Southern, Inc. (WK&S) is a privately owned

heritage railroad A heritage railway or heritage railroad (U.S. usage) is a railway operated as living history to re-create or preserve railway scenes of the past. Heritage railways are often old railway lines preserved in a state depicting a period (or periods) ...

company in

Kempton, Pennsylvania Kempton is a census-designated place in Albany Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania, Albany Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania, Berks County, Pennsylvania. Demographics Description Kempton is located at 40.625°N, 75.853°W at the junction o ...

. The company was founded in 1963 and operates over an isolated remnant of a former

Reading Company The Reading Company ( ) was a Philadelphia-headquartered railroad that provided passenger and freight transport in eastern Pennsylvania and neighboring states from 1924 until its acquisition by Conrail in 1976. Commonly called the Reading Railro ...

line. Its nickname is the Hawk Mountain Line due to its proximity to the Hawk Mountain range. The line runs along Ontelaunee Creek near areas favored by birdwatchers.

Operations

The WK&S operates tourist trains on about of track between Kempton and Wanamaker regularly on weekends between May and November as well as on special occasions using either

diesel Diesel may refer to: * Diesel engine, an internal combustion engine where ignition is caused by compression * Diesel fuel, a liquid fuel used in diesel engines * Diesel locomotive, a railway locomotive in which the prime mover is a diesel engine ...

steam engine A steam engine is a heat engine that performs Work (physics), mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a Cylinder (locomotive), cyl ...

s. Its Kempton station is not the original one, but consists of buildings from the

that were brought to their current location. The ticket office was the original station at

Joanna, Pennsylvania Joanna is an Unincorporated area, unincorporated community in southern Berks County, Pennsylvania, Berks County, Pennsylvania, United States. Joanna sits in southern Robeson Township, Pennsylvania, Robeson Township, near the borough (Pennsylvani ...

. The company owns a shop building and an additional of track south of Kempton.

History

The origins of the Wanamaker, Kempton & Southern date back to 1870 with the charter of a new railroad, the Berks County Railroad. In a very short time, the new line was bankrupt. It went to the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad as the renamed the Schuylkill and Lehigh line, a small branch line from

Reading Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of symbols, often specifically those of a written language, by means of Visual perception, sight or Somatosensory system, touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifacete ...

to Slatedale where the Reading connected with the

Lehigh Valley Railroad The Lehigh Valley Railroad was a railroad in the Northeastern United States built predominantly to haul anthracite, anthracite coal from the Coal Region in Northeastern Pennsylvania to major consumer markets in Philadelphia, New York City, and ...

. With the decline of railroads, the Reading Company filed abandonment of the Schuylkill and Lehigh line. In 1963 a group of volunteers founded the Wanamaker, Kempton & Southern Railroad with its main purpose to preserve railroad history. The original plan for the line was to operate of track from Kempton to Germansville. However this did not happen because an uncooperative land owner forced the new railroad to stop where the owner's land started, which is why the railroad stops just a north of Wanamaker along Route 143. The new railroad purchased of track for $65,000. After the rest of the line was abandoned, the tracks south of Kempton were next on the list to be scrapped, but the WK&S had no money to purchase the line. However, the scrapper donated of track south of Kempton. The end of the line to the south became North Albany.

Motive power

Gallery

File:H.K.Porter.1930.JPG, 0-6-0 H.K. Porter locomotive, #65 Image:Porter.loco2.JPG, '#65, inside Image:Whitcomb.loco.JPG, Whitcomb engine Image:Wanamaker.PA.JPG, Wanamaker Station Image:Car.conversiontorail.JPG, 1966 GMC Hyrail truck

References

External links