2 Antique CENTRAL RAILROAD PENNSYLVANIA Triplex Forks

Offered for auction is a pair of antique CENTRAL RAILROAD OF PENNSYLVANIA dining car silverware forks.  These forks are both slighty different.  The one fork is a dessert fork and is marked ARNBE  TRIPLEX on the back.  The other fork is also a desert fork and is marked 52  TRIPLE and something else that is worn and illegible.  Both forks have the same C of PA in a Keystone on the front of the handle.

The Central Railroad of Pennsylvania was a short railroad of 27.3 miles (43.9 km) built to connect Bellefonte, Pennsylvania with the Beech Creek Railroad (part of the New York Central) at Mill Hall, Pennsylvania. Sustained by shipments from the Bellefonte iron industry, the abandonment of the iron furnaces there led to its demise in 1918.

The Central Pennsylvania Railroad was incorporated on May 11, 1889 to connect Unionville with Mill Hall, running by way of Bellefonte and the Nittany Valley. On December 11, 1890, the Central Pennsylvania Railroad Eastern Extension was incorporated, to leave the main line of the first company at Lamar and follow Fishing Creek, Sand Spring Run, and White Deer Creek to White Deer on the Susquehanna. This would provide a connection to the Philadelphia and Reading Railway as well as the NYC.^[1]

The two companies were merged on September 11, 1891. The Eastern extension was never built, but from 1892 to 1893, the route from Mill Hall to Bellefonte was constructed, and the line opened on December 2, 1893.^[2] The principal mover behind its construction was John Wesley Gephart, then president of the Valentine Iron Company.^[3] He had reorganized the unsuccessful Centre Iron Company, and planned the new railroad to break the Pennsylvania Railroad's monopoly on traffic to and from Bellefonte.^[4]

These forks are antique (1891 to 1918) and have been well used, but are in very good condition.  I do combine shipping at the actual costs, so check out my other items - I have lots of other silver listed!!  All of my domestic packages are sent with delivery receipt and a tracking number.  Email me with any additional questions...