Woodside Train Station 1
The New Castle & Frenchtown Railroad, opened a 16-mile corridor between a wharf along the Delaware River in New Castle to a wharf along the Elk River in Frenchtown, Maryland on February 28, 1832. The NC&F initially used horse-powered carriages but on September 10th debuted an English-built steam locomotive. In 1839, the NC&F Railroad was sold to the Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington Railroad which had been incorporated just one year prior.(1)
The Delaware Railroad
was the major railroad in the state of Delaware, traversing almost the entire state north to south. It was planned in 1836 and built in the 1850s. It began in Porter and was extended south through Dover and Seaford and finally reached Delmar on the border of Maryland in 1859. Although operated independently, in 1857 it was leased by and under the financial control of the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad, a future component of the modern Pennsylvania Railroad
(PRR).
The Pennsylvania Railroad owned most of the trackage in Delaware, with a main line that stretched south from Wilmington, Delaware to Cape Charles, Virginia. The Pennsylvania Railroad was one of the most powerful companies of its time nearly until its merger with the New York Central in 1968.(2)
In the 19th century, it had become the largest landowner and taxpayer in Delaware and, as such, it came to play an outsized role in state politics. Read more...
1. (Reference: https://www.american-rails.com/de.html)
2. (Munroe, John A. (2006). History of Delaware (Fifth ed.). University of Delaware Press. ISBN 0874139473. Retrieved 10 September 2017)