Millway Village

Millway Village. . This 1940's calendar view looks east from above Meadow Valley Road. It shows the J.H. Reitz and Son company which operated on the site from 1902-1964, providing the railroad with freight traffic and supplying the surrounding agricultural community with equipment and supplies. Across the tracks is the Millway railroad station. The middle track is the railroad's main line with the Reitz siding to the left and the station track to the right Image courtesy Jeff Leaking., Map of the Reading and Columbia RR, 1934. Opened in 1863, to connect its two namesake towns, it became part of the Reading Company's vast railroad and coal operations. Although the section between Lititz and Ephrata that now makes up the Warwick to Ephrata Rail Trail was abandoned by 1985, the sections between Lancaster and Lititz and between Reading and Ephrata are still in use., Looking west, this early 20th Century photo shows a Reading and Columbia freight train and crew. Engine 858 is a camelback, which had its cab located atop the boiler, allowing the wide firebox needed to burn waste anthracite coal. Camelbacks were used on the line until the end of steam in the late 1950's. The J. H. Reitz coal trestle is visible at the lower right, where railroad hopper cars unloaded coal for sale to the company's Customers. Photo from Marvin Sauder collection, Millway Station. Before highways, trucks and planes there were trains. They carried people, mail, newspapers, parcels, food, crops and manufactured goods. The railroad station was the center of the community providing transportation and freight services, along with a telegraph connection. For most of rural America, the station was the only real window to the outside world., For more than a century, until the onset of the automobile age, the goods delivered by rail and unloaded at the station, made their way to homes, farms, and factories by "horsepower.” Photo from Marvin Sauder collection