Take a ride on the Strasburg Rail Road, as so many families and railfans have done over the years, and you’ll travel back in time – and if you’re paying attention, you’ll even spot a piece of Lebanon history standing in plain sight.
The tiny Cherry Hill station today stands vigilant at the line’s Cherry Hill Road grade crossing, alongside Cherry Crest Adventure Farm and a stone’s throw from Strasburg’s Groff’s Grove picnic area.
Don’t let the handsome tan and red paint job fool you about the structure’s age. This station, newly refurbished in a $12,000 project by the railroad’s in-house painters and carpenters, is more than 100 years old. What it looked like a century ago isn’t known, but what is known is its original location: Right here in Lebanon city.
Like Strasburg Rail Road itself, tiny Cherry Hill station represents the passion of rail road enthusiasts who took deliberate steps amid the bustle of the seemingly never-ending series of technological revolutions that marked the 20th century to preserve rail history for future generations.
Here’s what we know about the station’s early days.
It appears to have been installed by the Philadelphia and Reading Rail Road in 1907 at Scull Street and Partridge Avenue, along the south side of the tracks.
The watchman’s box was situated just a couple blocks west of the line’s luxe Lebanon station, an iconic city building to this day.
Read More: Let’s take a look at Lebanon’s historic Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Station
From 1907 until 1960, the archival trail goes cold – the watchman’s box presumably serving its purpose for the P&R and its successor, the Reading Company, with the tick-tock of technological progress ever pushing the industry forward. Electronic signals became the standard, as did automatic gates.
We pick up the thread again in May 1960, when Howard Fox, a Lebanon resident and president of the National Railway Historical Society, Lancaster chapter, told his fellow board members that an opportunity had arisen.
An old Reading Company crossing watchman’s box in Lebanon was being offered for sale by its owner for $10. Whether the owner was the Reading Company itself or some other property owner is not recorded. What is recorded is what the society did next.
With Strasburg Rail Road’s approval, the society purchased the structure and made plans for it to be installed near Groff’s Grove, where it remains today. The chapter owed a debt of gratitude to Strasburg Rail Road for being an early host to its meetings, as well as countless other collaborations in the years that followed.
By June 1960, the watchman’s box had been transported by a Champion Blower & Forge Co. truck to the East Strasburg terminal, followed by an August 1960 move via four-wheel track car to its permanent location. Lancaster chapter NRHS members took care of painting the structure.
Steve Himpsl, current second director for the Lancaster chapter, NRHS, said he thinks if Howard Fox and the other 1960 board members saw the station today, they would be very thankful for whomever continued the work on it and took care of what they were trying to save.
“I think they would be very satisfied that somebody after them took care of this,” said Himpsl.
The Cherry Hill station represents just a fraction of the preservation work done by the Lancaster chapter since its founding. In fact, the Lancaster chapter is the oldest part of NRHS. Organized as the Lancaster Railway and Locomotive Historical Society in 1934, just a year later the group merged with the Interstate Trolley Club of Trenton and New York to form the new National Railway Historical Society, with the original LR & LHS replaced by a new Lancaster chapter, NRHS.
The NRHS mission is to preserve railroad history and educate the public about railroad history.
To this end, the Lancaster chapter has undertaken numerous preservation projects, from restoring the 1882 Christiana passenger station to serve as its headquarters, and also maintaining the 1907 Christiana passenger station; to restoring time to the Amtrak passenger clock tower in Lancaster city; to various engine and car restorations and interpretive signs, such as those lining the Mayor Janice C. Stork Corridor Park, which follows the old Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad right-of-way in Lancaster city.
As for the Cherry Hill station, Himpsl says those early members would be tickled pink that something they did is still there, and that people are still interested in it – and he hopes it will remain there for a long time.
“The early chapter members would be well pleased with how it turned out and that somebody still cares about it,” he said.
A rededication ceremony of Cherry Hill station is planned for the spring, although a specific date has not yet been set.
If you’d like to plan a field trip to see the station yourself, the best place to start is Strasburg Rail Road’s website.
The oldest continuously operating railroad in the nation, Strasburg runs trains year-round, including a number of special events. Strasburg Rail Road is at 301 Gap Road in Strasburg Township, Lancaster County, next door to the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania.
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