The story
In the late 19th and early 20th century, Atlantic City and the South Jersey seashore were major seaside vacation destinations for Philadelphia area residents. The popularity of South Jersey's seashore was made possible by rail transport, which provided inexpensive and fast service between the Philadelphia area's population centers and shore points.
There were two competing railroad companies connecting Camden and, by ferry, Philadelphia, with the South Jersey seashore:
the West Jersey and Seashore Railroad (WJ&S), owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the Atlantic City Railroad, owned by the Philadelphia and Reading Railway.
Competition was fierce, albeit peculiar: "although they met annually [in the 19th century] to set fares and rules for excursion traffic, they battled for passengers by offering faster trains, better equipment, and even bribes to Atlantic City hoteliers and cab drivers."
By its height in the 1920s competition was so intense that at one time both lines boasted some of the fastest trains in the world.
Trains often raced one another so as to be the first to arrive at their destination. Racing was encouraged by the fact that in many areas, the two lines paralleled only several hundred feet apart. On the Cape May lines, the trains were in sight of each other for 11 miles between Cape May Court House and Cape May. Over the last 5 miles into Cape May, the tracks were only 50 feet apart.
On July 1, 1926, the Benjamin Franklin Bridge opened, spanning the Delaware River, connecting Philadelphia and Camden. Car, truck, and bus usage increased as the state built roads in the 1920s and 30s next to the railroads, cutting into profits.
On March 4, 1931, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) ordered the two companies to join their southern New Jersey lines into one company. The Consolidation Agreement decreed that the Pennsylvania Railroad had two-thirds ownership, and the Reading Company had one-third ownership.
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Following World War II, the rise of automobile use, the completion of the Atlantic City Expressway, and growing popularity of air travel led to a reduction in rail use. Increased air travel also led some to abandon Atlantic City for more exotic vacation destinations, including Florida. By the late 1960s, the surviving former Camden and Atlantic City Main Line was reduced to a commuter service funded by the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) running trains of Budd RDC railcars operating from a small terminal at Lindenwold PATCO station and Atlantic City.
While the P-RSL did not enter bankruptcy, its owners, the Penn Central, successor to the Pennsylvania, did. The Reading filed bankruptcy a few years after the Penn Central. As a result, Conrail took over the P-RSL on April 1, 1976.
From Wikipedia’s article on Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4