The New Castle and Frenchtown Railroad, opened in 1832, was one of the earliest railroads in the United States — and one of the shortest-lived. It ran 16 miles across the Delaware Peninsula to Frenchtown, Maryland, allowing passengers and cargo to bypass a particularly difficult section of the bay. The railroad operated for only five years before the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal made it redundant.
The original ticket office survives — a modest Federal-period brick building in the town center that has outlasted the railway it served by nearly two centuries. It is one of the oldest surviving railroad buildings in America. The building is not routinely open to visitors, but it can be seen from the street, and the Atlas Obscura community has noted it as one of New Castle's more unexpected survivals. The story of the railroad also illustrates how quickly transportation technology changed in the 1830s, and how New Castle found itself bypassed by successive waves of innovation.