These car bridges at Pier J were part of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company's massive dock and rail facilities in Port Richmond. These bridges would move up or down in order to align rail cars with barges so that they could be loaded. Once loaded the cars were floated to similar bridges across the river in Camden, either at the PRRC's Bulston Street Yard or their Linden Street Yard. These bridges remained the only way the PRRC was able to cross the Delaware in Philadelphia until the 1960s when they gained the rights to use the Delair Bridge, which until that time was owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad. That led to the abandonment of the car float operation in 1966. Since then they have sat idle.

1


2


3



A photo of the PRRR port facilites in 1930. Pier J can be seen in the center.

The float bridges at the Bulston Street Yard in Camden.

Killer, bro! Awesome stuff!

I've always thought these were so awesome. As a kid I thought of how many great accidents there could be with trains falling off the floats lol

i love when people include historic pictures with their set!

Posted by Mike Dijital i love when people include historic pictures with their set!

And I love when there is some sort of history write up given, too.

Sweet! Camden used to have so much as far as river edge facilities went. Linden St. was finally knocked off the map when the baseball stadium went up. Funny how even though the PRSL was a mostly joint operation in NJ, across the river was a different story.