On Dec 30, 2015, at 12:25 AM, Russ Burkett wrote:

I couldn't venture to say who is flagging the crossing but that photo would be pre 1906 since I see no 3rd rail electric facilities. Is the loco a D-13? Imagine the world of this exposure; gravel graded roads, horse hitching posts, few if any motorized vehicles and the only link to the world beyond Wenonah was in the copper wires overhead or by a ticket on that WJ&S train ("the Cars" as my ancestors called a train). Unless you were inclined to drive your carriage many long hours to a distant destination relying on the inns along the road for lodging, fare and livery maintenance and that infrastructure was already fading by the 1880s as the new age of rapid transport by rail became the standard.

Ancestors of mine lived to the left of the rails in this exposure in a house behind the haberdashery on the corner about 1892 to 1901 and Florence Willey, 22 years old in 1901, wrote in her diary how relieved she was to move to Lupton street in Woodbury as she would no longer suffer the indignation of coal cinders in her clean white blouses which she required to be a school marm properly dressed for education in the Westville school. Florence died in 1963 at 84, never having married and living with her spinster sister, Edith, who also taught school in the same place and died in 1970 at 82, never having married. Proper gals, they were! So what does this have to do with the PRSL?

Well both of them and their brother Samuel and mother Mary never owned a vehicle. None ever married or remarried after the tragic death of their father and husband, Ebenezer, in 1890 at age 40 as the result of a railyard accident in Greenwood, DE. Edith was 2 years old in 1890; I remember her well and she predicted that I would never amount to anything. She was right, of course, as I am a doctor now....Anyway, they all traveled the world and wrote of their adventures. Every trip to Westville school and every venture to Cherbourg or to Saipan began at Wenonah or Woodbury depot, WJ&S or PRSL. Fact! And that's patronage.

The other photo would be later than 1943 as the vehicle in the back appears to be a 1949 or 1950 Plymouth(?). Great picture, I remember the broken off bases of those crossing gate mounts in the early 70s as I hit one with my motorcycle while riding, legally?, on the ROW. I lost a tire and had to hump it back home to Pitman! and that meant crossing the trestle at Mantua creek pushing the old Yamaha all the way.

Thanks for entertaining my rant, anyone else?

Kindest regards, Russ B.