Richard Crook (1850-19?) started the Peoples Railway Company in 1900 to bring visitors via electric trolley to his Brandywine Springs Amusement Park outside of Wlimington. Over time it acquired the Wilmington & Brandywine Springs Railway Company, the Elsmere & Wilmington Electric Railway Company, the Park Railway Company and the Citizens Railway Company. In 1912, they absorbed the Union Railway Company and the Brandywine Railway Company. In 1915, Crook retired and sold the company to the Wilmington and Philadelphia Traction Company.

The Wilmington and Northern Railroad Company was a branch of the Reading railroad system running in a north-south direction between Wilmington, Del., and Reading, Pa. It began life on March 5, 1861, as the Wilmington and Brandywine Railroad Company. Its object was to connect the various industrial plants located along Brandywine Creek with other railroads leading to the west and to the anthracite coal regions. It changed its name and merged with the Berks and Chester Railroad Company of Pennsylvania on May 29, 1866, to form the Wilmington and Reading Railroad Company. It completed its line from Wilmington to Birdsboro, Pennsylvania, in 1870. By the end of 1875, the court overseeing the Wilmington and Reading Railroad bankruptcy had placed its property in the hands of separate commissioners, this undoing the merger. The W&R was sold at foreclosure on Dec. 4, 1876, and reorganized as the Wilmington and Northern Railroad Company under the control of its old owners on April 3, 1877. On August 10, 1898, Henry A. du Pont sold the controlling interest in the Wilmington and Northern Railroad Company to the Reading Company, and it was leased to the Philadelphia and Reading Railway Company and its successors on February 1, 1900.