PATCO’s ghost station in Franklin Square welcomed its first train passengers in almost 50 years

The platforms were brightly lit and ghosts were banished Thursday as train passengers disembarked at PATCO’s Franklin Square Station for the first time in more than 45 years.

The 14th stop on the PATCO line reopened after a $29.3 million renovation project that began in March 2022. It has a soaring headhouse at Seventh and Race Streets, with glass that lets in daylight and is embedded with a pattern that steers birds away from deadly collisions.

A green roof manages stormwater runoff, and customers have electrical outlets and USB sockets on the platforms. There are ample bicycle storage racks, and even tracks along the stairwell, called runnels, so people can walk their bikes smoothly to and from the trains.

And the green-and-white tile walls are cleaned up, looking as they would have when the station opened the first time on June 7, 1936 — on the Bridge Line, which had two stops in the city of Camden and two in Philadelphia. (The other was Eighth Street Station.)

Franklin Square Station was boarded up in the 1950s due to low ridership.

PATCO was born in 1968, when the area around Franklin Square was, well, seedy. The station was closed, then reopened in 1976 after being painted with an era-appropriate orange — until ridership dwindled again.

No passengers or trains in regular service had used Franklin Square Station since 1979, when it was closed and sealed for lack of riders. It settled into the gloom and dust as inbound trains from New Jersey rumbled by for decades.

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, Camden Mayor Vic Carstarphen, Federal Transit Administration Regional Administrator Terry Garcia Crews, and PATCO brass made remarks as a crowd of transit fans waited to squeeze through the gates into the station.

The Inquirer chatted with some of the station’s first riders.

“I work a block away and I feel like this is a personal gift to be able to watch this,” said Caitlin Corkery, a managing producer of children’s television at WHYY. “How often does a new transit station open? Franklin Square is such a time capsule. I’m blown away.”

She and her husband moved from Philadelphia to Collingswood — which she wryly called “South Jersey’s Brooklyn”— and PATCO was a big part of the attraction, even before the convenient new/old station.

“I don’t have to sit in bridge traffic getting angry and can relax and read a book,” Corkery said. “No Schuylkill or Kelly Drive. No parking fees.” It feels nothing like the usual car-commuter grind.

Miles in Transit, a celebrity among hard-core rail fans, was there to board the inaugural train from PATCO’s Franklin Square Station.

That’s the social media handle of Miles Taylor, a transit planner from Boston. His presence marked the reopening as a major event. He travels to ride transit systems all over the place; a new service or station opening is cause for excitement.

“The thing that’s cool about Franklin Square is that it’s been a long time since Philly got some shiny and new transit infrastructure,” said Taylor, 25, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in urban studies from the University of Pennsylvania.

In fact, he thinks the last station opening for the city was … of a remade Franklin Square Station during the Bicentennial.

He was followed down the platform by a dozen or so Miles fans, fellow transit enthusiasts who follow his work. They stopped when he stopped to look at the USB ports and gathered round to hear what he had to say as he took in the sights.

Taylor rode the inaugural train, a charter that went across the Ben Franklin Bridge and back before regular service. Being first is important.

“I love the pure excitement that comes from it,” Taylor said. “The big crowd, everybody cheering, the newness.”

He has been to recent big events in Canada’s capital, Ottawa, and flew to Florida for the inaugural run on a new Brightline intercity rail route. Taylor is looking forward to catching some new stations and service in Los Angeles in the fall.

Ray Scheinfeld, a prominent city cyclist who lives in the Metro Club condominium development a block away from the square, remembered riding the first eastbound PATCO train after the line had been expanded further into Camden County, in 1969 while he was in high school.

“I was in the fourth car, and this station wasn’t open at that time,” Scheinfeld said. “Went out to Lindenwold and back.”

He said his neighbors are pleased with the new transit option. “There’s a lot of people who live in the in the Old City area, and they can take it from here and go over to Rittenhouse, and that’s a quick jump,” Scheinfeld said.

Virginia Gil of Camden cheered as she got off the first regular westbound train to stop at Franklin Square at 1:37 p.m.

She was traveling with her best friend, Elizabeth Sánchez, visiting from Orlando, to see the historic sites of the city. They boarded at Ferry Avenue in Camden and learned they were pioneers.

“What’s emotional for me is we were riding in the first train to come from New Jersey … to this beautiful, remodeled station that opened today,” Gil said.

She had never ridden a first train in her life.