(The following story by Kara Fitzpatrick appeared at PhillyBurbs.com on April 12.)
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. — Forty-seven years and 238 impeccable drawings later, 14 thick volumes document the history of the Philadelphia, Newtown and New York Railroad, thanks to Richard Mansley.
The unique collection tells the complete story of the local railroad.
“Railroads were the superhighways of the 19th century,” said Mansley, 77. “The railroad stations were the supermarkets for transportation.”
Mansley, of Philadelphia, has taken time — almost five decades, to be exact — to draw the stations, signals and signs of the historic railroad. The result is a collection of drawings, made to scale, that gives historians and hobbyists a flawless blueprint of the past.
The Newtown Historic Association has a copy of Mansley’s collection, which documents the Newtown line. That rail line included stations at Newtown, Churchville and Upper Southampton, where a group has formed to refurbish the historic structure.
Mansley’s research will come in handy during that project, said Charles Liberto, a member of the Southampton Railroad Society. Mansley, a volunteer with the Newtown Historic Association, is giving the Southampton society a set of drawings of the structure to use in its rehabilitation efforts.
In addition, he will give a lecture at 7 p.m. April 24 on railroad history when the society meets in the first-floor meeting room of the Upper Southampton Public Library, 947 Street Road.
The meeting is open to the public.
Mansley said his interest in railroads was piqued by newspaper articles. From there, “I wanted to know more. I got interested in all the details,” he said.
Once he learned the details, he said he discovered that the railroad he knew was becoming extinct. “I realized that the railroad was being dismantled; they were just cannibalizing the system,” he said.
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Mansley, a mechanical draftsman by trade, took it upon himself to ensure that while the buildings might not always exist, they would be flawlessly documented.
In 1960, “I began taking pictures and doing sketches,” he recalled.
He started with a shelter at the County Line station, just below the Upper Southampton station. “It was just a small structure,” he said.
But his project continued.
Traveling to each of the stations that he drew, he’d arm himself with a tape measure and a camera. Often, he would walk the railroad from station to station to get the full effect of the line. Sometimes, if he was lucky, he would acquire drawings or blueprints of the stations.
“I became acquainted with people, and they would supply me with things,” Mansley said. He said he has interviewed more than 150 people — “anybody that would talk to me.”
While Mansley’s documentation is vast, he’s not ready to stop.
“I’ve completed up to [the year] 1929,” he said. He’s working to document 1930 and 1931.
He’ll press on because it’s a hobby, but more important, because the area’s railroads have a “very interesting history,” he said. “It was a whole different type of existence at that time.”