(The following story by John Walk appeared on the Intelligencer Journal website on August 1.)
LANCASTER, Pa. — Now that Providence Township owns the segment of the Enola Low-Grade Line within its borders, officials want to save one of the abandoned railroad’s vintage bridges.
The township’s board of supervisors plans to petition the state’s Public Utility Commission to allow the stone bridge carrying the railroad track over Hollow Road to remain. The bridge is one of six that the commission ordered torn down for safety reasons more than a decade ago.
“That’s one of the historic bridges that citizens in the township have indicated they would like to see stay,” Providence Township vice chairman Wayne Herr said.
The petition is on the agenda for the supervisors’ meeting Monday.
Norfolk Southern signed over 23 miles of the Enola Low-Grade line — 850 acres in all — to six Lancaster County townships this week, after about two decades of wrangling over the property by county, state and municipal entities.
Norfolk Southern is moving now to demolish the six bridges identified by the commission in its 1997 order.
Besides the Hollow Road bridge, the others are at Route 222, Oak Bottom Road and Sigman Road in Providence Township, at Pumping Station Road in Eden Township and at White Oak Road in Sadsbury Township.
Norfolk Southern plans to demolish all of them by the end of 2009.
Eden Township previously indicated it would like to save one of the bridges on its segment of the Enola line: the one carrying the railroad over Pumping Station Road.
The bridge along Hollow Road forms a picturesque arched tunnel through which the road passes.
Providence Township board member William Schall said the bridge is more than 100 years old.
If the petition to preserve the bridge is denied, Norfolk would undertake the removal of the stone structure. The land on either side of the road would be sloped to create a small valley with Hollow Road at the bottom.
Supervisors do not know how much it would cost the township to preserve the site, Schall said.
“We were waiting to obtain costs once we knew we actually had (possession) of the land,” he said.
Besides the six bridges slated for demolition by Norfolk Southern, there are 25 more bridges and at-grade road crossings along the Enola line in Lancaster County.
Norfolk signed over the property to to Bart, Conestoga, Eden, Martic, Providence and Sadsbury townships.
Providence Township owns the section of the line that runs through Quarryville Borough, in accordance with an agreement reached several years ago between those two municipalities.
Supervisors in several townships have said over the years they would be interested in converting the line into a rail trail. However, they were unwilling to take action until they obtained clear title to the property.