New Castle and Frenchtown Railroad

You are standing near the start of the first railroad in Delaware, and one of the very first in the entire United States. The New Castle and Frenchtown Railroad opened to full passenger service on February twenty-eighth, eighteen thirty-two, running about sixteen miles across the narrow neck of land from the Delaware River here at New Castle to the Chesapeake Bay at Frenchtown, Maryland.

It was built to shorten the grueling trip between Philadelphia and Baltimore. Travelers rode a steamboat down the Delaware to New Castle, boarded the train across the peninsula, then caught another steamboat down the Chesapeake. Horses pulled the cars at first, with steam locomotives following, and the earliest coaches were built by local stagecoach makers, resembling horse carriages fitted with flanged wheels. The roadbed used stone sleepers instead of wooden ties. Part of the line still carries freight today.