Yes so first of all its Schuylkill as in the Schuylkill River and Schuylkill interlocking is in between Suburban Station which is 15 16th and 17th Street and Market, JFK Boulevard.
30th Street is an Amtrak station that SEPTA passes through and that's the Amtrak station for points South and Points North. It is attached to zoo interlocking which is the largest interlocking in the world or was anyway at one time, who knows now. It goes by the Philadelphia Zoo.
SEPTA is actually an excellent rail system and entails the defunct Reading Railroad and the Penn Central Railroad combined. It was run by Conrail for a brief time in the seventies but was quickly taken over by the bus, trolley, high speed rail company Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority.
As some of you know my background I was always a newspaper guy and I'm also a registered nurse, I grew up in Philly moved to New York for about 17 years and then moved back in 1985, unfortunately the licensing system for RNs was not computerized at that time and I had reciprocity between New York and Pennsylvania but I had an 8-week wait for my nursing license.
I answered an ad in the paper for railroad engineer's with SEPTA and was hired. I had a year of training and qualifying as a railroad engineer on the extra board meaning I was qualified on the entire system because I didn't have the seniority to be assigned my own job. On the extra board you covered people's vacations and did protect Crews.
Because of my bachelor's it wasn't long before I was promoted into rail operations and after doing some Tower work, temporary block stations, order running I was assigned as an assistant to the superintendent of the railroad and owned the delay desk. Investigating all delays of trains by interviewing the crews and questioning them why they were late and assembled a report every day for the superintendent. It was mostly creative writing like slippery rail, pregnant woman crossing the tracks, delay in crew relief Etc. I left the railroad just under five years Service as I did not want to go into railroad retirement and I stayed in Social Security instead.
It was a great experience and I learned everything there was to learn about SEPTA Regional Rail. The trains I ran as an engineer were the old Budd electric silver liners, the GE silverliners, the Bombardier electric engines. SEPTA now uses the new silver liners made by Bombardier and apparently these new electric engines that just tow and push regular cars.
Another reason I left was because of my experience and quick advancement they were beginning to tap my talents to do accident investigation. After a few times of picking up the body parts and putting them in plastic bags and hours and hours of endless paperwork, getting close to my 5 years I had enough LOL.
