Torresdale
 North Philadelphia, PA | Keystone Service | Trenton, NJ  |
Cornwells Heights is the Philadelphia-area's attempt at having a Park & Ride station along the Northeast Corridor with easy access to nearby expressways for suburban residents. The station historically opened in the 1930s but was vastly expanded, with the addition of a very large park & ride lot owned by Penn DOT, in 1997 in anticipation of construction on I-95. This park & ride lot is complete with its on and off ramps (no traffic lights or merging with neighborhood traffic required) to and from I-95, including a left exit from the Southbound direction. This gives the train station 1861 parking spaces that are all surface parking.
The layout of the parking lot (and lack of a proper pedestrian connection between the two sides of the tracks, except from the underpass of Station Avenue), means that the farthest parking space from the Trenton-bound platform is nearly a third of a mile away. This results in SEPTA running (through a contractor) Bus Route 312, the Cornwells Heights Parking Lot Shuttle to connect the parking lot with the station. When I visited in the PM rush hour in 2013 two cutaway-minibuses (the drivers greeting their regular commuters) met each train to help commuters get back to their cars. The minibuses had destination signs, but they unfortunately weren't on. All this parking made the station in 2017 the busiest outside of Center City. This parking lot shuttle makes Cornwells Heights unique, it is the only train station in America (that I at least know of) that isn't shared with an airport that has a parking lot shuttle to get passengers to and from trains.
The station is technically also a stop for Amtrak and became one with the vast increase in parking in November 1997. Although, unlike stations like Route 128 for Boston, Metropark in suburban New Jersey, or New Carrolton in Maryland, having frequent Amtrak trains stop at Cornwells Heights for suburban Philadelphians on multi-day trip has never happened. All Amtrak service to the station has been commuter focused as well. Service has exclusively been from Keystone Service trains (plus I found one reference to the Pennsylvanian), and the New York to Philadelphia rush hour only Clocker trains (primarily used by NJ Transit monthly ticket holders under contract) before these were discontinued in 2005 (replaced by more NJT trains that terminate at Trenton).
Today the station receives Amtrak service on weekdays only, via one New York-bound Keystone Service train in the AM Rush hour, and two returning trains in the PM rush hour. These trains are scheduled around commuters making the quite expensive (a monthly ticket costs $1,000, a 10 ride ticket averages out to $40 a ride) but fast, 75 to 80 minute, 74 mile trip to and from New York-Penn Station. This compares to a travel time of over two hours by taking SEPTA to NJ Transit to get from Cornwells Heights to New York-Penn Station.
The station originally consisted of two low-level platforms for the four-track line that begin just north of the underpass of Station Avenue, with staircases leading up to the end of each platform from Station Avenue. These platforms each have a small parking lot alongside them with 315 paid SEPTA controlled parking spaces, including an additional small lot north of station Avenue, nestled between the Philadelphia-bound track and I-95.
The in-service Trenton-bound platform is still in this area with a tactile warning strip leading up to a wooden ramp up to a mini-high platform at the front of the platform. Waiting passengers have a modern green bus shelter (with a nicer than normal looking shingled-style tented roof) covering a bench. There is also a small grey shelter facing the side of the parking lot, designed for passengers waiting for rides or the parking lot shuttle. This platform contains wooden level crossings to allow doors to be open if trains ever stop on the adjacent normally express track, with a step down off the slightly higher than most SEPTA station's platform.
The Philadelphia-bound side of the station is much more complicated. The original low-level platform is still intact, but fully fenced off. There is still a modular green and white painted building that I assume was once the ticket office and waiting room. A sign says R7 Trenton Line and something else (I can't read it in my photographs) behind it. Red signs along this building and the fence have arrows pointing in one direction towards “Outbound Trains to Trenton: Use Stairway to Station Avenue”, and in the opposite direction for “Ticket Office/Waiting Room: Inbound Trains to Center City Phila.”
The in service Philadelphia-bound platform begins about 450 feet south of the staircase down to Station Avenue. This low-level platform, with a wooden ramp leading up to mini-high platform at its southern/front end, contains just two entrance; two walkways with green fences through some greenery. These connect the platform with a sidewalk along the driveway that connects the large PDOT-owned park and ride with the rest of the station (although there isn't a completely direct entrance) because the platforms are alongside the descending left-exit off ramp from Southbound I-95. One entrance is angled at the northern end of the new platform to try and provide a slightly more efficient walking connection to the Trenton-bound platform and original station parking lots.
This platform has amenities with two modern cream, green and glass block waiting shelters containing benches. There is also a wooden with green trim modular looking building in the middle of the platform (with the roof slightly overhanging it) containing a door into the station's still open for one shift each weekday morning ticket office.
Signage at the station — when I visited in 2013 — is the unusual SEPTA-miss-match some still referencing the R7, some modern blue signs. There is no clear indication that Amtrak trains stop at the station except for a poster advertising Acela on the station building, an information panel with a couple of If You See Something, Say Something, and Children Travel Half-Off posters, and enclosures for Amtrak bridge plates on the mini-high platforms.
In Fall 2023, SEPTA announced it had secured funding to rebuild the station with high-level platforms and a pedestrian bridge just off of the main PENN DOT operated park and ride lot. That should remove the need for SEPTA Bus Route 312, the parking lot shuttle bus. Unfortunately this project means the neighborhood (including a nearby apartment complex) just southwest of the station that can currently easily walk to and from the station will now face much longer walks to the new station location where access will be focused to the giant parking lot.
Photos 1-59: March 27, 2013;
