Capitol Limited (B&O train) were particularly noted for their Chesapeake Bay cuisine, served in ornate cars with leaded glass windows, glass chandeliers, and colonial-style furnishings. The "Capitol Limited" derived much of its passenger traffic from businessmen and government officials traveling between Washington and the midwest. On September 1, 1926, the Pennsylvania Railroad terminated its contract with the B&O, which had permitted the latter to use the "Pennsy's" Hudson River tunnels and Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan. Thereafter, the "Capitol Limited", along with all other B&O passenger trains to New York, operated over the Jersey Central's main line from the connection with the Reading in Bound
Franklin B. Gowen president, Charles E. Smith, so that when Smith took a needed ocean voyage for his health in mid-1869, 33-year-old Gowen was put in charge upon Smith's recommendation to the Board of Managers. When Smith was unable to return for the next board election in January 1870, Gowen was elected president in his own right, a position he would occupy for more than a decade. The Philadelphia and Reading Railroad was a regional carrier only, not a trunk line with its own through connections to Pittsburgh, Chicago and beyond, like the Pennsylvania, the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) or the Erie railroads.