Millway Village

Millway Village developed around the Reading and Columbia Railroad, which opened in 1863 to connect Reading and Columbia and later became part of the Reading Company's railroad and coal operations. The Millway railroad station stood across the tracks from the J.H. Reitz and Son company, which operated on the site from 1902 to 1964, generating freight traffic for the railroad and supplying the surrounding agricultural community with equipment, supplies, and coal unloaded from hopper cars at its coal trestle. In a 1940's view looking east from above Meadow Valley Road, the railroad's main line ran between the Reitz siding and the station track. An early twentieth century westward view showed a Reading and Columbia freight train and crew, including engine 858, a camelback with its cab atop the boiler to accommodate the wide firebox needed to burn waste anthracite coal; such engines remained in use on the line until the end of steam in the late 1950's. The station served as the community's transportation, freight, and telegraph center in the era before highways, trucks, and planes, when trains carried passengers, mail, newspapers, parcels, food, crops, and manufactured goods, and when rail-delivered goods continued on to homes, farms, and factories by horse power. Although the section between Lititz and Ephrata that now forms the Warwick to Ephrata Rail Trail had been abandoned by 1985, the sections between Lancaster and Lititz and between Reading and Ephrata remained in use.

Rothsville, Pennsylvania · United States