Reading–Taunton line marketed as the "Kennet Line", follows the River Kennet through the outer suburbs of Reading to Theale. The line passes through Berkshire countryside and local stations at Aldermaston, Midgham and Thatcham. Newbury race course lies alongside the line on the left and has its own station a short distance east of the main Newbury railway station, where the town centre is close by on the right of the line. The station has a bay platform on the right for local terminating trains, and the through platforms are on loop lines that allow fast trains to overtake the local services that
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.