Chestnut Hill East station
SEPTA Regional Rail station

Chestnut Hill East station is a SEPTA Regional Rail station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Located at 102–04 Bethlehem Pike at Chestnut Hill Avenue, it serves the Chestnut Hill East Line. The current station building was built in 1931 by the Reading Railroad, as a replacement for an earlier station that existed between 1872 and 1930.
The station is in zone 2 on the Chestnut Hill East Line, on former Reading Railroad tracks, and is 10.8 track miles from Suburban Station. In 2013, this station saw 433 boardings and 479 alightings on an average weekday. Chestnut Hill East is often confused with Chestnut Hill West, which is a SEPTA station a few minutes away from Chestnut Hill East's location. Boarding statistics, however, show greater usage of this line than of the Chestnut Hill West Line by Chestnut Hill residents.
Prior to rebuilding and electrification circa 1931, the stub terminal had three short passenger car tracks serviced by two platforms, a small engine terminal with a turntable, five-stall roundhouse and water tank, plus a few freight tracks serving storage buildings and a coal and lumber business.
Bibliography
Alexander, Edwin P. (1940). Model Railroads: Planning Construction Operation.
The public source identifies “Chestnut Hill East station” as sEPTA Regional Rail station. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Chestnut, Hill and East.
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Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5093949. Authority coordinates are 40.081, -75.208. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1931, 1872, 1930 and 2013.
Modern boundaries and familiar names can conceal earlier jurisdictions or structures that do not align with the present site. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chestnut Hill East station” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.