East Penn Railroad: Blue Returns to the Bustleton Branch

The Former Conrail Bustleton Branch is an often overlooked small piece of railroad in Northeast Philadelphia. Connected to Amtrak's Northeast Corridor at Holmesburg Junction, Conrail and after that CSAO would serve the branch with several busy customers, such as Allied Tube & Conduit, the Hostess Bakery and Muller Beer. All of the business dried up as East Penn Railroad took over operations on the branch from Grant Avenue to the end past Red Lion Road, leaving only storage moves as the sole purpose of the Branch. When Allied Tube closed up in 2015/2016, their resident former Conrail SW900, number 8635, was purchased by ESPN, where it would sit mostly dormant with the other resident ESPN unit, GP10 2202 and then after, number 1700. Well, 1700 was sent out for work to the ESPN headquarters in Kennett Square, leaving the 8635. Hope has returned to the Bustleton Branch in 2018, with Morano Trucking on Blue Grass Road now receiving boxcars during the week, with CSAO bringing the cars up from Frankford Junction Yard, up the NEC and onto the Branch to the interchange at Grant Avenue.

After trying to catch this run for a while, I struck luck when I came down on Monday September 17, 2018 to see the ESPN crew starting up the battered blue SW900, running as NE-17, the crew ran lite to Grant Avenue to pick up the four boxcars (As Morano can fit four at a time) before shoving them down the branch along Grant Avenue and NE Philadelphia Airport, before spotting them and calling them a day.

The next time I saw them was September 26th, after the crew had a long afternoon working the Bristol operations, running out to the interchange in the late evening, grabbing the loads, pulling the empties from Morano, then spotting the loads and taking the empties before calling it a day.

Thanks for watching!