The pictures on the front of the paper fans reminded me of postcards.
One showed men in suits and boater hats eyeing sunbathers on a beach from a boardwalk at the Jersey shore. Another showed byway scenes to New York, topped by the city’s skyscrapers. Still another showed boats and cars at the new waterfront terminal in Camden, NJ, along with the Broadway Flyer train.
All were featured on fans promoting Sunday excursions on the Reading Lines, whose trains could take you from Philadelphia to the Jersey shore to the coal region of Pennsylvania and the streets of New York. Depending on where you lived, you could get to your destination for as little at $1.75 or as much as $4 (a trip from Philadelphia up the Hudson River in New York).
The fans were dated 1923 and 1925.
Despite their commercialization, the fans also offered a bit of history through pictures. Here’s some of what I found interesting:
The Reading Lines was the popular name for the Reading Company. This was a railroad conglomerate that grew out of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad (P&R) in 1923. The line lasted 1976 when it was acquired by Conrail.
The P&R itself was formed in 1833 as a 94-mile railroad to carry anthracite coal to places in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. It became one of the largest corporations in the country by the 1870s and remained so until after World War II. Its trains were some of the fastest in the world, and the Boardwalk Flyer was said to have broken records to Atlantic City.
The Boardwalk Flyer was a huge train that transported folks from Philadelphia to Atlantic City at a time when the Reading Company was competing for the Atlantic City market with Pennsylvania Railroad. Back then, Atlantic City was the place to go – it was called “the playground of the world” – for both the wealthy and working class, and rail made getting to the shore both quick and inexpensive.
One historian tells the story about a rivalry between the two that involved parade floats. It seems that the Pennsylvania had already won the grand prize for a float in an Atlantic City parade. The owners of the Reading wanted to one-up the company with its own original and magnificent float.
Its workers made a life-size replica of the 227-ton Broadway Flyer. It was secreted into the city until the day of the parade in 1925, and then the big train was paraded down the Boardwalk. The replica looked so real that some folks were afraid the Boardwalk would collapse under it. It did not, and the Reading Lines won the grand prize.
Butterfly sheds were not sheds but open-air canopies covering the outside waiting areas at train terminals. They were so-called because the roofs flowed upward in a wing shape to form the canopy. The sheds were made to resemble terminals in London.
They became very popular in the 1920s because they offered more ventilation from train fumes and protection for passengers – unlike the earlier covered shed-like design.
