"Pencoyd & Pennsylvania"?

Does anybody have any information on this short line, near Philadelphia? I'm told it had a bridge across the river to an engineering works at Manayunk, but did it connect to the RDG or PRR?

Reading went right past Pencoyd Steel along the West bank of the Schuylkill just as NS freight still does today. A few of Pencoyd's buildings, or at leat their foundations are still there. Reading had a small passenger station for the workers on that line in the early 20th Century. If you look at the spot today it is difficult to imagine that the Reading or any railroad could have accessed the plant facilities from this West bank branch as it runs on a ridge quite a bit higher than the plain that the plant facilities were built on, hence the bridge from the Manyunk section of Phila. That bridge, which is still there, (and from its design it clearly was originally a railroad bridge) carries truck and car traffic across the Schulykill from the East bank of the River but as two lines, the Reading and the PRR ran through that stretch of the city it could have beeen either line that ran those tracks into Pencoyd. I am going to do some resaerch in some of my Pennsy and Reading books to see if I can figure it out. For anyone interested in railroad archaeology this is a good plave to visit.

This was the plant facility of American Bridge Co.; according to Taber, the corporation was dissolved in 1929 and it was operated privately by American Bridge. If you look at a current topo map of Manayunk, you can see a track diverging from the former PRR Schuylkill Branch just before it crosses the Schuylkill, switching back and dropping over the Reading and under the PRR bridge to river level. This is the PRR Pencoyd Branch, which connected the PRR to the P&P at the west bank part of the works. The P&P also interchanged with the adjacent Reading, and continued south along the Schuylkill, ducking under Reading's bridge to Venice Island, and finally crossing over to the east bank of the Schuylkill to end in that part of the American Bridge complex.

Choess; As I said I would try to do some research in my rail books and indeed I found what you have just written is pretty much accurate. Apparently back in the late 1800's the PRR built a very long wooden trestle, long gone, and a switchback to get down from their from Philly to Reading and points north line to access what was still Pencoyd Iron Works where it serviced that facility and interchanged with the Reading which also serviced the iron works. The bridge across the Schuylkill to Venice Island still had a three times a week service out of the West Falls yard until very recently and it still may be running ( I haven't been out there fore two years). I think that was always a Reading operation rather than PRR. I also discovered that what is now Connelly Container was originally part of Pencoyd before it was bought out by US Steel circa 1900. Anyway some of this infrastructure is still there and is worth a visit. AM light is best for photography.

Did the tail track of the PRR's switchback ever cross Belmont Ave., possibly to serve the quarries along Rock Hill Rd.?

The 1926 Sanborn map doesn't show any extension across Belmont Ave, nor do any of the selection of Lower Merion atlases online, which pretty well cover the time between the building of the Schuylkill Branch and the 1930s. The "Belmont Cement Burial Case" plant was directly across Belmont Ave. from the little yard at the end of the switchback; maybe it absorbed some of the quarry production for local use.

Looking at Google Maps, the bridge to Venice Island is still there, but track has been taken up, probably as part of the New-Orleans-on-the-Schuylkill redevelopment of the island. I remember seeing a picture of the impressive Pencoyd Branch trestle, maybe in the Triumph series.