New Castle and Frenchtown Turnpike and Railroad Company
An NC&F ticket office sits in a park in New Castle, Delaware | |
| Overview | |
|---|---|
| Locale | Delaware and eastern Maryland, U.S. |
| Dates of operation | 1832–1877 |
| Successor | Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad |
| Technical | |
| Track gauge | 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge |
The New Castle and Frenchtown Turnpike and Rail Road (NC&F) was a railroad, opened in 1832, that connected the Delaware River at New Castle, Delaware to the Chesapeake Bay at Frenchtown, Maryland. It was the first railroad in Delaware and one of the first in the United States. Approximately half of the route was abandoned in 1857; the rest became part of the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) route into the Delmarva Peninsula and is still used by Norfolk Southern Railway.
The abandoned segment from Bear, Delaware, to Frenchtown, the New Castle and Frenchtown Railroad Right-of-Way, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.