Franklin Street station is a former railroad and bus station in Reading, Pennsylvania. It currently is owned by Berks Area Regional Transportation Authority (BARTA) and hosts a brewpub restaurant operated by Saucony Creek Brewing Company. Built by the

Reading Railroad The Reading Company ( ) was a Philadelphia-headquartered railroad that provided passenger and commercial rail transport in eastern Pennsylvania and neighboring states that operated from 1924 until its 1976 acquisition by Conrail. Commonly call ...

and dedicated on February 25, 1930, Franklin Street Station later served the

SEPTA diesel service The SEPTA Regional Rail system is a commuter rail network owned by the SEPTA, Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority and serving the Delaware Valley, Philadelphia Metropolitan area. The system has 13 branches and more than 150 active ...

extending the

Manayunk/Norristown Line The Manayunk/Norristown Line is a commuter rail service in Southeastern Pennsylvania, and one of the 13 lines in SEPTA's Regional Rail network. It has the fourth highest ridership and the highest operating ratio (58%) on the SEPTA Regional Rail ...

to Pottsville. It closed when SEPTA cancelled the diesel service in 1981. BARTA acquired the building on December 14, 2005, and converted it into a bus depot in May 2013.

History

The Franklin Street station served the railroad from 1930 until 1981 when

ceased operations. Medium distance trains serving the station included the ''

King Coal ''King Coal'' is a 1917 novel by Upton Sinclair that describes the poor working conditions in the coal mining industry in the western United States during the 1910s, from the perspective of a single protagonist, Hal Warner. As in his earlier wor ...

'' and ''Schuykill.'' From 1981 until 2013, the building sat vacant until BARTA acquired and refurbished the building for bus services. The plan was to alleviate overcrowded services at the BARTA Transportation Center located about a block away, as well as make an effort to preserve the historic station. Grants from Federal, State and Local sources funded the acquisition and rehabilitation costs. The purpose for the acquisition was to create a multi-use complex in which the rehabilitation/renovation of the existing Franklin Street Station building and site was an integral component of the overall development of a transportation facility in the area. Between September 2013 and January 2014 BARTA bus service to

Lebanon Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), officially the Republic of Lebanon () or the Lebanese Republic, is a country in Western Asia. It is located between Syria to Lebanon–Syria border, the north and east and Israel to Blue ...

was operated from the Station. Due to low ridership, the bus service was discontinued. In July 2017 the station was used for a multimedia art exhibition entitled "This is Reading" In June 2018, Saucony Creek Brewing Company leased the facility and opened a brewpub restaurant in July 2019. There is a proposal to return

SEPTA Regional Rail The SEPTA Regional Rail system is a commuter rail network owned by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority and serving the Philadelphia Metropolitan area. The system has 13 branches and more than 150 active stations in Philadelp ...

service to the station by way of an extension of the

, providing passenger train service from Reading to

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...

. In 2020, the

Pennsylvania Department of Transportation The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) oversees transportation issues in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The administrator of PennDOT is the Pennsylvania Secretary of Transportation, currently Yassmin Gramian. Presently, Pe ...

conducted a feasibility study on bringing passenger train service to Reading.

References

Former SEPTA Regional Rail stations Former Reading Company stations Railway stations closed in 1981 Former railway stations in Pennsylvania Transportation museums in Pennsylvania Museums in Reading, Pennsylvania Transportation buildings and structures in Berks County, Pennsylvania Bus stations in Pennsylvania Repurposed railway stations in the United States {{Pennsylvania-railstation-stub