Bala
Cynwyd (pronounced Kin-wood) has been the terminus of the 2.1 mile long Cynwyd Line since service was cut back there on May 27, 1986 due to poor track conditions on the Manayunk Bridge over the Schuylkill River. Today the line ends at a bumper block just north of the station's platform. The former trackway north of here has been turned into the Cynwyd Heritage Trail and Ivy Ridge Trail along the railroad viaduct. It's a bucolic trail that includes the support beams of the former catenary system along it, the upper arms of the system still strung with electrical wires.
The station has a single side platform on the west side of the track. This begins with a mini-high platform at its southern end just south of the wide arch bridge of Conshohocken State Road. This is a curving road that turns north just after the bridge, with Montgomery Avenue continuing straight. The rest of the platform continues as a low-level platform. All access is towards the northern end of the platform. Here a staircase and switch-backing ramp lead up to the historic Cynwyd Station.
This historic depot was built in 1890. This building is a Victorian-era gabled roof building with brick walls, and green and white gabled roof shelters. The building nearly burned down in 1973 but didn't fully and was then abandoned for many years. The station was leased to the Lower Merion Historical Society to be restored in the 2007. The restoration took six years, completed on April 27, 2014. This unfortunately included the demolishing of the attached wooden shelter sheds that once existed over both station platforms to provide much better coverage for waiting passengers at the station from sun and the rain. A historical society video interview series on the project said that this was necessary to improve sightlines to the historic station so people could appreciate its architecture.
The inside of the depot was leased to become an 1890-themed Cynwyd Station Cafe and Tea Room. This was replaced by a more conventional cafe named Trails End Cafe at Cynwyd Station from 2016 through May 29, 2022. It was reopened again in September 2022 as what you could call much a more modern tea room, a Boba and Poke Bowl/Ramen Restaurant called Platform Z (that has one additional location). This depot is alongside a small parking lot (the station has 27 parking spaces in total) with driveway access to Conshohocken State Road.
Across from the historic depot, a pedestrian grade-crossing (with road crosswalk hand and walk pedestrian style signals) leads across to what was once the second trackway and second platform. This contains the start of the Cynwyd Heritage Trail and includes a direct staircase and more circuitous ramp up to a crescent-shaped road that curves from the Conshohocken State Road right alongside bridge over to Llandrillo Road.
Operationally single-car Cynwyd Trains discharge their passengers at the station's short platform before continuing north a little bit to unblock the pedestrian grade-crossing in the middle of the station and laying over before their next trip back to Suburban Station in Center City, when they re-enter the station platform (blocking the pedestrian grade-crossing) for loading passengers again before making the short trip back to Center City.
Photos 1-37: September 4, 2024;
