Reading Company EMU #863 was state-of-the-art when built by Bethlehem Shipbuilding for the 1931 electrification of the Reading's Philadelphia-area commuter train routes.

The car still has its distinctive cab end bus jumper (the winglike device on the roof ahead of the pantograph). The electrical bus jumpers allowed a train of several cars to operate with just one pantograph raised.

Cars of this type remained in service through the beginnings of SEPTA operation of the RDG and PRR regional rail networks in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It is one of several former RDG EMUs now owned and preserved by the Reading Company Technical and Historical Society, and is shown in storage at the organization's site in Leesport, Pa., north of Reading.

RCT&HS opened its new museum in Hamburg, Pa. in April 2008.

Photographed by Thomas McCann, October 11, 2002.
Added to the photo archive by Thomas McCann, December 13, 2006.
Railroad: Reading.

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