The Short Life of the Chester Creek and Brandywine Railroad

By Jonathan L. Hoppe

Photo courtesy of The Chester County Press

After the Civil War, American railroads entered a time of rapid expansion. Lines were pushed westward across the length continent; Southern railroads, destroyed during the war, were reconstructed. In the industrial northeast, venture capital flowed freely to back nearly any speculative scheme to build a railroad connecting point A to point B. As long as there was cheap credit, the wheels of commerce would keep the good times rolling.

On August 9th, 1873, the Chester Creek and Brandywine Railroad company was organized to construct a railroad to connect the West Chester and Philadelphia Railroad with the Wilmington and Reading Railroad. Starting at a point just north of Street Road Station in Westtown township, the railroad would extend westward five miles, past Darlington’s Corners through the lands of Henry Whale, past Brinton’s quarry and down into the Brandywine Valley through Birmingham Township and connecting with the Wilmington ad Reading near the mouth of the Pocopson Creek. The company hoped, in a later phase, to extend its line all the way down into Maryland via Unionville to make a through route from Baltimore to Philadelphia in direct competition with the Philadelphia and Baltimore Central Railroad, but in the meantime, the line would offer a direct connection between agriculturally-rich southcentral Chester County and the markets of the city of Philadelphia.

A preliminary route was surveyed across both townships and construction began late in September. Workmen’s shanties were erected at Street Road station and a crew began to build up an embankment for the roadbed. Curving gently northwestward, the earthwork would carry the line to the Chester Creek where a stone bridge would take it over the water and onward to Pocopson.

But the company could not have picked a worse time to begin construction. Financial troubles in Europe that summer were percolating to the United States’ banking sector, pushing many firms over the brink. One of the country’s largest lenders, the brokerage house of Jay Cooke and Company in Philadelphia, had overextended itself in what were proving to be worthless railroad investments. It could not take the additional economic pressure brought on by the European market turmoil. The firm collapsed, declaring bankruptcy on September 18th. The fall of the banking giant sent shockwaves rippling through the economy of the United States, much as the fall of Lehman Brothers would do 135 years later. By November, many railroads, now without their financial backing, had failed and many more were in dire straits. The Panic of 1873 was at hand.

The Chester Creek and Brandywine Railroad was not spared. By December, local merchants and farmers around the construction site at Street Road were complaining of unpaid bills for board and for horse feed left by the railroad’s laborers. Work seemed to have come to a halt.

Company officials claimed that they were getting their financial affairs in order, and that the any delays on paying the workmen’s bills were from the company having to pay out compensatory damages to the landowners through whose properties the line would pass. They blamed the weather for the work stoppage, and stated that they were waiting on the stone for the bridge over Chester Creek to be shipped in before work could resume. It was noted in the press that in spite official reassurances, the company’s bonds were selling for mere pennies on the dollar in Philadelphia—and that no one was buying.

The stone for the bridge never would arrive; the dream was over. Work on the railroad was officially suspended in early 1874, and it never would again be taken up. The Panic of 1873 triggered a global depression with effects lasting a decade or more. The railroad bubble had burst for good. Never again would Chester County see another new line completed without the backing of the mighty Pennsylvania Railroad.

Today, only an overgrown, tree-lined embankment curving through a creekside meadow in Westtown Township is the only indication that the Chester Creek and Brandywine Railroad had ever been.