Internet Infrastructure Followed the Reading Rail Line for High-Performance Transit between Reading and Philadelphia. Now Passenger Trains Will Roll Again.

Chartered in 1833 and beginning service in 1842, the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad first hauled coal and then passengers from Philadelphia through Reading to Pottsville.  It was discontinued in 1976 when the line was acquired and immediately abandoned by Conrail.  But thanks to the board game Monopoly, the Reading Railroad remains recognized worldwide. 

Train lovers and those who prefer the convenience and economy of passenger rail service over driving are celebrating the news that service between Reading and Philadelphia appears to once again be on the way after a nearly half-century hiatus.  The two cities have historic ties dating to before the Revolutionary War and the economic impact of the restored line is projected to be as much as a billion dollars.  

Restoration of the Reading Railroad emphasizes transportation's important links with fiber and internet connectivity.  Typically, fiber pathways offering the connectivity required for high-performance internet have been built along the railways and highways.   As The Atlantic noted in an interesting piece on network infrastructure, “Networks tend to follow networks, and telecommunications and transportation networks tend to end up piled on top of each other.”

Early telecom providers followed the rail line, resulting in a high-capacity fiber pathway between Philadelphia and Reading, one that has continued to grow over the years.  The connectivity empowered the Direct LTx data center in Reading to grow into a key regional connectivity hub, with over a dozen carriers connecting into the facility, along with onramps to major cloud service providers. 

Though the new rail service will terminate in Reading, the fiber pathways that originated on the Reading Railroad now continue nearly everywhere, including from Reading south to Northern Virginia, the world’s premier data center and connectivity hub.   This provides meaningful redundancy for tech-savvy organizations seeking additional options along with the primary fiber route between New York and Northern Virginia. 

If your business needs would benefit from the resilience and high performance that comes with a data center or hybrid cloud presence in Reading, Direct LTx is worth exploring.  To find out why, you should read 8 Key Questions for Every Philly IT Infrastructure Decisionmaker: Will Your Data Center and Cloud Strategy Propel Your Organization to Success or Leave You Behind the Times in Our Challenging Market, a white paper published by Direct LTx.  Email strategy@directltx.com to arrange for your copy or for a discussion and a tour of the richly connected, resilient, high-availability Direct LTx data center.

For now, Philadelphians simply make the convenient drive to Direct LTx.  But in the years to come it looks like Monopoly fans will be able to put on their top hat, pass go, and seek their fortune (or at least improve their organization’s online security and performance) by making that same trip on the new version of the iconic Reading Railroad.