My first ride on a railroad train was on the Philadelphia and Atlantic, a narrow gauge railroad, shortly after it was completed. It took only three months to build this line by hand labor. The older folks said it was a rough and bumpy ride, but I did not mind the bumps. I was only too pleased that Father took me along to Philadelphia. At that time he was making shoes for a firm there and had to make the trip monthly to get supplies and his pay.
Folks from the neighborhood patronized the new railroad because it was the first to give us a station on Cologne Avenue. Before that they had to walk to Egg Harbor to board a train, or push a cart along the sand and mud road to send or receive freight. In about 1884 the Reading Railroad purchased the line and made a standard gauge road out of the same.
I enjoyed my visit to Philadelphia, sitting on a stoop in the evening in front of a friend's house on Fifth Street near Girard Avenue watching the horse cars pass by with their jingling bells; and the men with a torch on a long stick lighting the gas street lamps.
Father's hobby was playing a guitar and singing and when in town stopped at a little music store nearby on Second or Third and Callowhill Streets for guitar strings and songbooks.
I still remember the kindly old shopkeeper Septamus Winner, composer of a song that never dies, "Listen to the Mocking Bird."