The core of the Delair Branch is the
Delair Bridge, which crosses the
Delaware River between
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and
Pennsauken, New Jersey, northwest of
Camden. The bridge was built between 1895 and 1896 by the
Delaware River Railroad and Bridge Company, a subsidiary of the
Pennsylvania Railroad. The formal opening of the bridge occurred on April 19, 1896. The west end of the branch connected with the
Connecting Railway, another Pennsylvania Railroad subsidiary, at
Frankford Junction. That line is now part of the
Northeast Corridor through North Philadelphia. On the New Jersey side, the branch was extended east in 1897 to reach the
West Jersey and Seashore Railroad at
West Haddonfield and the
Pemberton Branch at Pennsauken. The Pennsylvania Railroad merged the Delaware River Railroad and Bridge Company into the
Penndel Company, a holding company, on January 1, 1954. Ownership remained there through the
Penn Central merger, and the line was conveyed to
Conrail in 1976 following the
Penn Central bankruptcy. Ownership of the adjacent Northeast Corridor passed to
Amtrak. In 1994, Conrail and Amtrak collaborated to make the southernmost track on the Northeast Corridor between Frankford Junction and the
Schuylkill River freight-only. At the western end, Conrail built a new connection to the
Trenton Line. Conrail extended the "Delair Branch" westward to cover this new "line." In the 1999 breakup of Conrail,
CSX obtained the Trenton Line, while the Delair Branch remained with
Conrail Shared Assets Operations. Similar to the arrangement with Amtrak, the Conrail line shared the alignment between Frankford Junction and Pennsauken with
NJ Transit's
Atlantic City Line. == Notes ==