Early Transportation in the “Southern End”
Wagons and Stagecoaches
In the 1800s, modes of public transportation included horse-drawn carriages and stagecoaches to carry passengers and mail through the southern end of Lancaster County. Travel was slow and the distance traveled each day was short. For instance, in the late 1860s, stagecoaches carried passengers for long journeys through the area as they traveled from Quarryville to Lancaster and back in one day, starting at 6:00 a.m., with an afternoon return pick-up at 3:00 p.m. Stagecoach lines continued until the early 1900s but began to decline with the establishment of railroads in the southern end in the 1870s. Many towns had small hotels or taverns in order to accommodate overnight guests on long journeys.
Books on the History of Southern End Railroads
A Railroad for the Southern End, A History of the Little, Old and Slow by Mike Roth and Stanley T. White, (c) 2014, published by Mike Roth and Stanley T. White. Available for sale at Solanco Historical Society’s gift shop and archive warehouse, 1932 Robert Fulton Highway (Rt. 222), P.O. Box 33, Quarryville, PA 17566 (Fulton Township) (717-548-2679) and at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, 300 Gap Road, Strasburg, PA 17579 (717-687-8628). For further information on books available from these authors, connect to this site: https://rothandwhite.site/.
Quarryville in Lancaster County’s “Southern End,” Where the Race of Men Go By, by Mike Roth and Stanley T. White, (c) 2014, published by Mike Roth and Stanley T. White, P.O. Box 329, Willow Street, PA 17584, printed by Seaber, Turner & Associates.
Recollections & Romance of the Peach Bottom Railway 1868-1881, by Mary Louise Boomsma, (c) 2012, Brookshire Printing, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Scale Drawings of the Peach Bottom Railway, Later Known as the Lancaster, Oxford and Southern Railroad, Vol. 1, by Stanley T. White, (c) 2005, published by Stanley T. White.
Little, Old and Slow, The Life and Trials of the Peach Bottom and Lancaster, Oxford and Southern Railroads, by Benjamin F. G. Kline, Jr., 1985. Friends of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.
Trains provided a means of transporting iron ore, Peach Bottom slate, produce and lime to Lancaster for distribution to other points via mainline trains. Passengers were transported much faster by train so they could shop, consult doctors and visit relatives and friends in the larger towns of Lancaster, Oxford and later the cities of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and New York. 1890s train schedules show trips between Quarryville and Lancaster being completed in just under an hour.
Trolleys also provided transportation to Lancaster and Oxford so passengers could enjoy a shortened trip as compared to horse and carriage travel.
Railroads
In March 1868, the Governor of Pennsylvania signed a charter for the Peach Bottom Railway Company to be built in the southern end of Lancaster County. “The Peachy” carried passengers over the line for 50 years, until 1919.
Beginning in the mid-1870s, a railroad line was planned by the Lancaster & Reading Narrow Gauge Railroad Company to build a route from Lancaster to Quarryville but it was purchased by the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company before being built.
