 It also bought the Marietta and Portsmouth Railroad, under whose charter it built a branch, paralleling the river and canal, from Royalton to Columbia.Besides the canal, the Philadelphia and Columbia (and the new branch from Royalton) connected to the Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge, which provided rail access to the Northern Central Railway via the Wrightsville, York and Gettsyburg Railroad.The PRR was forced to use the Philadelphia and Columbia between Dillerville and Philadelphia, and the sometimes lackadaisical operation of the state-run railroad proved burdensome and a bottleneck to traffic.