The Delmarva Peninsula, or simply Delmarva, is a large peninsula on the East Coast of the United States, occupied by the vast majority of the state of Delaware and parts of the Eastern Shore regions of Maryland and Virginia. The peninsula is 170 miles (274 km) long. In width, it ranges from 70 miles (113 km) near its center, to 12 miles (19 km) at the isthmus on its northern edge, to less near its southern tip of Cape Charles. It is bordered by the Chesapeake Bay on the west, Pocomoke Sound on the southwest, the Delaware River, Delaware Bay, and the Atlantic Ocean on the east.
The Chesapeake & Delaware Canal is a 14-mile (22.5 km)-long, 450-foot (137.2 m)-wide and 35-foot (10.7 m)-deep ship canal that connects the Delaware River with the Chesapeake Bay in the states of Delaware and Maryland in the United States.
A swing bridge is a movable bridge that has as its primary structural support a vertical locating pin and support ring, usually at or near to its center of gravity, about which the turning span can then pivot horizontally as shown in the animated illustration to the right. Small swing bridges as found over canals may be pivoted only at one end, opening as would a gate, but require substantial underground structure to support the pivot.
NJ Transit Rail Operations is the rail division of NJ Transit. It operates commuter rail service in New Jersey, with most service centered on transportation to and from New York City, Hoboken, and Newark. NJ Transit also operates rail service in Orange and Rockland counties in New York under contract to Metro-North Railroad. The commuter rail lines had an average weekday ridership of 306,892 from June 1, 2015, to June 30, 2016, making it the second-busiest commuter railroad in North America as well as the longest by route length. This does not include NJ Transit's light rail operations.
In civil engineering, grade separation is a method of aligning a junction of two or more surface transport axes at different heights (grades) so that they will not disrupt the traffic flow on other transit routes when they cross each other. The composition of such transport axes does not have to be uniform; it can consist of a mixture of roads, footpaths, railways, canals, or airport runways. Bridges, tunnels, or a combination of both can be built at a junction to achieve the needed grade separation.
The Eastern Shore of Maryland is a part of the U.S. state of Maryland that lies mostly on the east side of the Chesapeake Bay. Nine counties are normally included in the region. The Eastern Shore is part of the larger Delmarva Peninsula that Maryland shares with Delaware and Virginia.
The Delaware and Hudson Railway (D&H) is a railroad that operates in the Northeastern United States. In 1991, after more than 150 years as an independent railroad, the D&H was purchased by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CP). CP operates D&H under its subsidiary Soo Line Corporation which also operates Soo Line Railroad.
The New Castle and Frenchtown Turnpike and Rail Road (NC&F) was opened in 1831, was the first railroad in Delaware and one of the first in the United States. About half of the route was abandoned in 1859; the rest became part of the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) route into the Delmarva Peninsula and is still used by Norfolk Southern Railway. The abandoned segment from Porter, Delaware, to Frenchtown, Maryland, the New Castle and Frenchtown Railroad Right-of-Way, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.
Buckingham Branch Railroad is a Class III short-line railroad operating over 275 miles (443 km) of historic and strategic trackage in Central Virginia. Sharing overhead traffic with CSX and Amtrak, the company's headquarters are in Dillwyn, Virginia in the former Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad (C&O) station, itself a historic landmark in the community. The railroad was featured in the January 2012 issue of Trains Magazine. It is referenced in the How It’s Made episode “Railway Bridge Ties”, showing it crossing a curved bridge.
Pencader Hundred is an unincorporated subdivision of New Castle County, Delaware. Hundreds were once used as a basis for representation in the Delaware General Assembly, and while their names still appear on all real estate transactions, they presently have no meaningful use or purpose except as a geographical point of reference. It is named after Pencader, Carmarthenshire, Wales.
The Delair Bridge is a railroad bridge with a vertical-lift section that crosses the Delaware River between Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Pennsauken Township, New Jersey, just south of the Betsy Ross Bridge. The two-track bridge is part of Conrail Shared Assets Operations and is jointly used by Norfolk Southern Railway and CSX Transportation freight trains, as well as by the New Jersey Transit Atlantic City Line service.
The Bay Coast Railroad operated the former Eastern Shore Railroad line between Pocomoke City, Maryland, and Norfolk, Virginia. The railroad interchanged with the Delmarva Central Railroad in Pocomoke City and Norfolk Southern in Norfolk; the interchange in Pocomoke City had been with Norfolk Southern prior to December 2016, when the Delmarva Central Railroad leased 162 miles (261 km) of Norfolk Southern track on the Delmarva peninsula.
The Shellpot Branch is a former Pennsylvania Railroad/Penn Central through-freight railroad owned and operated by Norfolk Southern since its acquisition, along with CSX Transportation, of Conrail in 1999. The branch allows Norfolk Southern, since the opening of a new bridge in 2001, to bypass the city of Wilmington, Delaware and allows direct access to both the Port of Wilmington and the New Castle Secondary, which connects to the Delmarva Subdivision of the Delmarva Central Railroad that runs to Central Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia's Eastern Shore. Both ends of the branch connect with Amtrak's Northeast Corridor and, like all of the PRR's through-freight lines, was electrified from 1935 until the Conrail era. The line was originally built doubly tracked, but was subsequently converted to single track.
The Alton Junction, more commonly known as the 21st Street Crossing, is a historically significant rail location in Chicago, Illinois. The junction can be found just east of Canal Street and north of Cermak Road near Chicago's Chinatown. It is located just south of a massive vertical lift bridge that spans the South Branch of the Chicago River and "guards" the entrance to Chicago's Union Station. While a significant amount of rail traffic still traverses this interlock every day, it has been greatly reduced from using 26 diamonds to control over 150 trains using the crossing.
The New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk Railroad was a railroad line that ran down the spine of the Delmarva Peninsula from Wilmington, Delaware to Cape Charles, Virginia and then by ferry to Norfolk, Virginia. It became part of the Pennsylvania Railroad system.
The Lehigh Line is a railroad line in central New Jersey and northeastern Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is owned and operated by the Norfolk Southern Railway. The line runs west from the vicinity of the Port of New York and New Jersey to the Susquehanna River valley at the south end of the Wyoming Valley Coal Region. Administratively it is part of Norfolk Southern's Keystone Division (Harrisburg) and is also part of the Crescent Corridor. As of 2021 the line is freight-only, although there are perennial proposals to restore passenger service over all or part of the line.
The Delmarva Central Railroad is an American short-line railroad owned by Carload Express that operates 188 miles (303 km) of track on the Delmarva Peninsula in the states of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. The railroad operates lines from Porter, Delaware to Hallwood, Virginia and from Harrington, Delaware to Frankford, Delaware along with several smaller branches. The DCR interchanges with the Norfolk Southern Railway and the Maryland and Delaware Railroad. The railroad was created in 2016 to take over the Norfolk Southern Railway lines on the Delmarva Peninsula. The DCR expanded by taking over part of the Bay Coast Railroad in 2018 and the Delaware Coast Line Railroad in 2019.
The Delaware Railroad was the major railroad in the US state of Delaware, traversing almost the entire state north to south. It was planned in 1836 and built in the 1850s. It began in Porter and was extended south through Dover, Seaford and finally reached Delmar on the border of Maryland in 1859. Although operated independently, in 1857 it was leased by and under the financial control of the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad. In 1891, it was extended north approximately 14 miles (23 km) with the purchase of existing track to New Castle and Wilmington. With this additional track, the total length was 95.2 miles (153.2 km).
