Lehigh Valley Railroad

The LVRR immediately became the trunk line down the Lehigh Valley, with numerous feeder railroads connecting and contributing to its traffic. The production of the entire Middle Coal Field came to the LVRR over feeders to the Beaver Meadow: the Quakake Railroad, the Catawissa, Williamsport and Erie Railroad, the Hazleton Railroad, the Lehigh Luzerne Railroad and other smaller lines. At Catasauqua, the Catasauqua and Fogelsville Railroad transported coal, ore, limestone and iron for furnaces of the Thomas Iron Company, the Lehigh Crane Iron Company, the Lehigh Valley Iron Works, the Carbon Iron Company, and others. At Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the North Pennsylvania Railroad which was completed during the Summer of 1856, provided a rail connection to Philadelphia and thus brought the LVRR a direct line to Philadelphia. At Phillipsburg, New Jersey, the Belvidere Delaware Railroad connected to Trenton, New Jersey. To accommodate the 4 ft 10 in (1,473 mm) gauge of the Belvidere, the cars were furnished with wheels having wide treads that operated on both roads.

The 1860s saw an expansion of the LVRR northward to the Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, area and up the Susquehanna River to the New York state line.

Asa Packer was elected President of the Lehigh Valley Railroad on January 13, 1862.

In 1864, the LVRR began acquiring feeder railroads and merging them with its system. The first acquisitions were the Beaver Meadow Railroad and Coal Company, which included a few hundred acres of coal land, and the Penn Haven and White Haven Railroad. The purchase of the Penn Haven and White Haven was the first step in expanding to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. To reach Wilkes-Barre, the LVRR began constructing an extension from White Haven, Pennsylvania, to Wilkes-Barre. The Penn Haven and White Haven Railroad allowed the LV to reach White Haven.

In 1866, Master Mechanic Alexander Mitchell designed the "Consolidation" 2-8-0 locomotive, built by Baldwin, which was to become a standard freight locomotive throughout the world. 2-8-0 pattern provided the traction needed for hauling heavy freight, but had a short enough wheelbase to manage curves. Also in 1866, the LVRR purchased acquired the Lehigh and Mahanoy Railroad (originally the Quakake Railroad) and the North Branch Canal along the Susquehanna River, renaming it the Pennsylvania and New York Canal & Railroad Company (P&NY). The purchasing of the North Branch Canal saw an opportunity for a near monopoly in the region north of the Wyoming Valley. In 1866, two years after the purchase of the Penn Haven and White Haven, the extension from White Haven to Wilkes-Barre opened.

Construction of a rail line to the New York state line started immediately and, in 1867, the line was complete from Wilkes-Barre to Waverly, New York, where coal was transferred to the broad gauge Erie Railroad and shipped to western markets through Buffalo, New York. To reach Wilkes-Barre, the LVRR purchased the Penn Haven & White Haven Railroad in 1864, and began constructing an extension from White Haven to Wilkes-Barre that was opened in 1867. By 1869, the LVRR owned a continuous track through Pennsylvania from Easton to Waverly.

In the following year, the LVRR—a standard gauge railroad—completed arrangements with the Erie Railroad, at that time having a six-foot gauge, for a third rail within the Erie mainline tracks to enable the LV equipment to run through to Elmira and later to Buffalo.

Further rounds of acquisitions took place in 1868. The acquisitions in 1868 were notable because they marked the beginning of the LVRR's strategy of acquiring coal lands to ensure production and traffic for its own lines. Although the 1864 acquisition of the Beaver Meadow had included a few hundred acres of coal land, by 1868 the LVRR was feeling pressure from the Delaware and Hudson and the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad in the northern Wyoming Valley coal field, where the railroads mined and transported their own coal at a much reduced cost. The LVRR recognized that its own continued prosperity depended on obtaining what coal lands remained. In pursuit of that strategy, the 1868 purchases of the Hazleton Railroad and the Lehigh Luzerne Railroad brought 1,800 acres (7.3 km2) of coal land to the LVRR, and additional lands were acquired along branches of the LVRR. Over the next dozen years the railroad acquired other large tracts of land: 13,000 acres (53 km2) in 1870, 5,800 acres (23 km2) in 1872, and acquisition of the Philadelphia Coal Company in 1873 with its large leases in the Mahanoy basin. In 1875, the holdings were consolidated into the Lehigh Valley Coal Company, which was wholly owned by the LVRR. By 1893, the LVRR owned or controlled 53,000 acres (210 km2) of coal lands. With these acquisitions, the LVRR obtained the right to mine coal as well as transport it.

The 1870s witnessed commencement of extension of the LVRR in a new direction. In the 1870s the LVRR acquired other large tracts of land starting at 13,000 acres (53 km2) in 1870, with an additional of 5,800 acres (23 km2) in 1872, and turned its eye toward expansion across New Jersey all the way to the New York City area. In 1870, the Lehigh Valley Railroad acquired trackage rights to Auburn, New York, on the Southern Central Railroad.

The most important market in the east was New York City, but the LVRR was dependent on the CNJ and the Morris Canal for transport to the New York tidewater. In 1871, the LVRR leased the Morris Canal, which had a valuable outlet in Jersey City on the Hudson River opposite Manhattan. Asa Packer purchased additional land at the canal basin in support of the New Jersey West Line Railroad, which he hoped to use as the LVRR's terminal. That project failed, but the lands were later used for the LVRR's own terminal in 1889.

The CNJ, anticipating that the LVRR intended to create its own line across New Jersey, protected itself by leasing the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad (L&S) to ensure a continuing supply of coal traffic. The L&S had been chartered in 1837 by the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company (the Lehigh Canal company) to connect the upper end of the canal at Mauch Chunk to Wilkes-Barre. After the LVRR opened its line, the Lehigh & Susquehanna extended to Phillipsburg, New Jersey, and connected with the CNJ and the Morris and Essex Railroad in 1868. In 1871, the entire line from Phillipsburg to Wilkes-Barre was leased to the CNJ. For most of its length, it ran parallel to the LVRR.

The LVRR found that the route of the Morris Canal was impractical for use as a railroad line, so in 1872 the LVRR purchased the dormant charter of the Perth Amboy and Bound Brook Railroad which had access to the Perth Amboy, New Jersey, harbor, and added to it a new charter, the Bound Brook and Easton Railroad. The State of New Jersey passed legislation that allowed the LVRR to consolidate its New Jersey railroads into one company; the Perth Amboy and Bound Brook and the Bound Brook and Easton were merged to form a new railroad company called the Easton and Amboy Railroad (or Easton & Amboy Railroad Company).

The Easton and Amboy Railroad was a railroad built across central New Jersey by the Lehigh Valley Railroad to run from Phillipsburg, New Jersey, to Bound Brook, New Jersey, and it was built to connect the Lehigh Valley Railroad coal-hauling operations in Pennsylvania and the Port of New York and New Jersey to serve consumer markets in the New York metropolitan area, eliminating the Phillipsburg connection with the CNJ that had previously been the only outlet to the New York tidewater; until it was built, the terminus of the LVRR had been at Phillipsburg on the Delaware River opposite Easton, Pennsylvania. The Easton and Amboy was used as a connection to the New York metropolitan area, with a terminus in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Construction commenced in 1872 as soon the Easton and Amboy was formed; coal docks at Perth Amboy were soon constructed, and most of the line from Easton to Perth Amboy was graded and rails laid. However, the route required a 4,893-foot (1,491 m) tunnel through/under Musconetcong Mountain near Pattenburg, New Jersey (about twelve miles east of Phillipsburg), and that proved troublesome, delaying the opening of the line until May 1875, when a coal train first passed over the line. To support the expected increase in traffic, the wooden bridge over the Delaware River at Easton was also replaced by a double-tracked, 1,191-foot (363 m) iron bridge.

At Perth Amboy, a tidewater terminal was built on the Arthur Kill comprising a large coal dock used to transport coal into New York City. These tracks were laid and the Easton and Amboy Railroad was opened for business on June 28, 1875, with hauling coal. The Easton and Amboy's operations were labeled the "New Jersey Division" of the Lehigh Valley Railroad. The Easton and Amboy had already completed large docks and facilities for shipping coal at Perth Amboy upon an extensive tract of land fronting the Arthur Kill. Approximately 350,000 tons of anthracite moved to Perth Amboy during that year for transshipment by water. Operations continued until the LVRR's bankruptcy in 1976. The marshalling yard is now the residential area known as Harbortown.

Passenger traffic on the LVRR's Easton and Amboy connected with the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) at Metuchen, New Jersey, and continued to the PRR'S Exchange Place terminus in Jersey City; that connection was discontinued in 1891 after the LVRR established its own route to Jersey City from South Plainfield. The Easton and Amboy Railroad was absorbed into the parent Lehigh Valley Railroad.

In 1875, the LVRR financed the addition of a third rail to the Erie Railroad main line so that cars could roll directly from colliery to the port at Buffalo. While the third rail on the Erie Railroad main line between Waverly and Buffalo gave the LVRR an unbroken connection to Buffalo, the road's management desired its own line into Buffalo. The Geneva, Ithaca & Athens Railroad passed into the hands of the LVRR in September 1876, which extended from the New York state line near Sayre, Pennsylvania, to Geneva, New York, a distance of 75 miles.

On May 17, 1879, Asa Packer, the company's founder and leader, died at the age of 73. At the time of his death, the railroad was shipping 4.4 million tons of coal annually over 657 miles (1,057 km) of track, using 235 engines, 24,461 coal cars, and over 2,000 freight cars of various kinds. The company controlled 30,000 acres (120 km2) of coal-producing lands and was expanding rapidly into New York and New Jersey. The railroad had survived the economic depression of 1873 and was seeing its business recover. Leadership of the company transferred smoothly to Charles Hartshorne, who had been vice president under Packer. In 1883, Hartshorne retired to allow Harry E. Packer, Asa's 32-year-old youngest son, to assume the Presidency. A year later, Harry Packer died of illness, and Asa's 51-year-old nephew Elisha Packer Wilbur was elected president, a position he held for 13 years.

The 1880s continued to be a period of growth, and the LVRR made important acquisitions in New York, expanded its reach into the southern coal field of Pennsylvania which had hitherto been the monopoly of the Reading, and successfully battled the CNJ over terminal facilities in Jersey City.

In 1880, the LVRR established the Lehigh Valley Transportation Line to operate a fleet of ships on the Great Lakes with terminals in Chicago, Milwaukee, and Duluth. This company became an important factor in the movement of anthracite, grain and package freight between Buffalo, Chicago, Milwaukee, Duluth, Superior and other midwestern cities. Following Federal legislation which stopped the operation of such service, the lake line was sold to private interests in 1920.

The port on Lake Erie at Buffalo was critical to the LVRR's shipments of coal to western markets and for receipt of grain sent by the West to eastern markets. Although in 1870 the LVRR had invested in the 2-mile (3.2 km) Buffalo Creek Railroad, which connected the Erie to the lakefront, and had constructed the Lehigh Docks on Buffalo Creek, it depended on the Erie Railroad for the connection from Waverly to Buffalo, New York.

In 1882, the LVRR began an extensive expansion into New York from Sayre, Pennsylvania (just southeast of Waverly) to Buffalo. Construction from Sayre to Buffalo was split into two projects, Sayre to Geneva, New York, and Geneva, which is located at the northern end of Seneca Lake), to Buffalo. First, it purchased a large parcel of land in Buffalo, the Tifft farm, for use as terminal facilities, and obtained a New York charter for the Lehigh Valley Railway, a similar name to the LVRR, but with "railway" instead. LVRR subsidiary, Lehigh Valley Railway began constructing the main line's northern part from Buffalo to Lancaster, New York, in 1883, a total distance of ten miles. This was the second step toward establishment of a direct route from Sayre to Buffalo (thus avoiding the connecting spur to Waverly and on to Buffalo on the Erie), the first being the acquisition of the Geneva, Ithaca & Athens Railroad.

In 1887, the Lehigh Valley Railroad obtained a lease on the Southern Central Railroad (the LVRR previously had trackage rights on the railroad starting in 1870), which had a route from Sayre northward into the Finger Lakes region. At the same time, the LVRR organized the Buffalo and Geneva Railroad to build the rest of the 97-mile Geneva to Buffalo trackage, from Geneva to Lancaster. Finally, in 1889, the LVRR gained control of the Geneva, Ithaca, and Sayre Railroad and completed its line of rail through New York. As a result of its leases and acquisitions, the Lehigh Valley gained a near-monopoly on traffic in the Finger Lakes region.

It also continued to grow and develop its routes in Pennsylvania. In 1883 the railroad acquired land in northeast Pennsylvania and formed a subsidiary called The Glen Summit Hotel and Land Company. It opened a hotel in Glen Summit, Pennsylvania, called the Glen Summit Hotel to serve lunch to passengers traveling on the line. The hotel remained with the company until 1909, when it was bought by residents of the surrounding cottages.

In New York State, s branch line, the Hayts Corners, Ovid & Willard Railroad opened May 14, 1883 from the Geneva, Ithaca & Sayre to the Willard asylum, and continued in service until 1936.

In Pennsylvania, the Lehigh scored a coup by obtaining the charter formerly held by the Schuykill Haven and Lehigh River Railroad in 1886. That charter had been held by the Reading Railroad since 1860, when it had blocked construction in order to maintain its monopoly in the Southern Coal Field. That southern field held the largest reserves of anthracite in Pennsylvania and accounted for a large percentage of the total production. Through neglect, the Reading allowed the charter to lapse, and it was acquired by the Lehigh Valley, which immediately constructed the Schuylkill and Lehigh Valley Railroad. The line gave the LVRR a route into Pottsville, Pennsylvania, and the Schuylkill Valley coal fields.

The Vosburg Tunnel was completed and opened for service on July 25, 1886. The 16-mile mountain cut-off, a rail segment of the line that extended from Fairview, Pennsylvania, to the outskirts of Pittston, Pennsylvania, was completed in November 1888. This allowed the line's eastbound grade to be reduced and a shorter route for handling through traffic established.

The LVRR had built coal docks in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, when it built the Easton and Amboy in the 1870s, but desired a terminal on the Hudson River close to New York City. In New Jersey, the LVRR embarked on a decade-long legal battle with the CNJ over terminal facilities in Jersey City. The land that Asa Packer had obtained in 1872 was situated on the southern side of the Morris Canal's South Basin, but the CNJ already had its own facilities adjacent to that property and disputed the LVRR's title, which partly overlapped land the CNJ had filled for its own terminal.

Most of the other remaining Lehigh Valley track serves as branch lines, or has been sold to short line and regional operators.

These operators include:

Finger Lakes Railway/Ontario Central Railroad

Genesee Valley Transportation Company (Depew, Lancaster & Western)

Livonia, Avon and Lakeville Railroad

New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway

Reading Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad

The Lehigh Line

The Lehigh Line was the Lehigh Valley Railroad's first rail line and served as the main line. It was opened on June 11, 1855, between Easton, Pennsylvania, and Allentown, Pennsylvania, passing through Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Three months later the line branched out to the northwest past Allentown to Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania (then known as Mauch Chunk), on September 12, 1855. The line was later extended out to the northwest past Jim Thorpe to the Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, area and later it reached the Buffalo, New York, area and past Easton all the way to Perth Amboy, New Jersey, and then switched direction to the northeast to Jersey City, New Jersey, later cut back to Newark, New Jersey.

During the early years, the line served as the body of the Lehigh Valley Railroad until the railroad either built, acquired, or merged other railroads into its system. During the majority of its ownership under the Lehigh Valley Railroad, the line was known as the Lehigh Valley Mainline, starting in the 1930s. The line and the rest of the Lehigh Valley Railroad was absorbed into Conrail in 1976 and was maintained as a main line into the New York City area.

The line became known as the Lehigh Line during Conrail ownership. Conrail integrated former CNJ main line leased trackage into the line and kept the line in continuous operation (since 1855); however, it downsized the line in the northwest from the Buffalo area of New York State: first to Sayre Yard in Sayre, Pennsylvania; then to Mehoopany, Pennsylvania; and finally to Penn Haven Junction in Lehigh Township, Carbon County, Pennsylvania. The line's being downsized three times created two new rail lines: the Lehigh Secondary and the Lehigh Division, which was later sold to the Reading Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad (RBMN) in 1996; the RBMN would later cut back the Lehigh Division from Mehoopany to Dupont, Pennsylvania. The tracks from Dupont to Mehoopany became a new rail line called the Susquehanna Branch.

In 1999, the Norfolk Southern Railway which is owned by the Norfolk Southern Corporation acquired the Lehigh Line in the Conrail split with CSX Transportation but the tracks from Manville, New Jersey, to Newark, New Jersey, were kept with Conrail in order for both Norfolk Southern and CSX to have equal competition in the Northeast. The existing tracks from Manville to Newark became a new rail line and Norfolk Southern along with CSX own it under a joint venture. However, for historical purposes, the part from Manville to Newark is considered a new rail line and the Norfolk Southern part is considered the original line. Now under ownership of the Norfolk Southern Railway, the Lehigh Line's route is now from Port Reading Junction in Manville, New Jersey, to Penn Haven Junction in Lehigh Township, Pennsylvania. This is currently the last time the line has been downsized.

Current operations

The Lehigh Line still exists and still serves as a major freight railroad line that operates in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The line is still owned and operated by the Norfolk Southern Railway and the line still runs from Port Reading Junction in Manville, New Jersey, to Penn Haven Junction in Lehigh Township, Pennsylvania.

The line connects with Conrail Shared Assets Operations's Lehigh Line, the new rail line, and CSX Transportation's Trenton Subdivision at Port Reading Junction in Manville, New Jersey, and connects with the Reading Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad's Reading Division at Packerton, Pennsylvania, and Reading Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad's Lehigh Division, originally M&H Junction, in Lehighton.

The line makes notable connections with other Norfolk Southern lines such as the Reading Line and independent shortline railroads.

At Three Bridges, New Jersey, in Readington Township, the line interchanges with Black River and Western Railroad. At Phillipsburg, New Jersey, the line interchanges with its New Jersey side branch line, the Washington Secondary and the Belvidere and Delaware River Railway which also passes over the Belvidere and Delaware River after that. Across the river in Easton, Pennsylvania, the line interchanges with its Pennsylvania side branch line, the Portland Secondary, which extends from Easton to Portland, Pennsylvania, connecting to the Stroudsburg Secondary, which was originally part of the Lackawanna Old Road (or simply Old Road); the Stroudsburg Secondary goes under the Lackawanna Cut-Off and connects with the Delaware-Lackawanna Railroad.

The line hosts approximately twenty-five trains per day, with traffic peaking at the end of the week. East of the junction with the Reading Line in Allentown and in Bethlehem, the line serves as Norfolk Southern's main corridor in and out of the Port of New York and New Jersey, and the New York Metro Area at large, as Norfolk Southern doesn't currently use the eastern half of its Southern Tier Line, which follows the Delaware River from Port Jervis north to Binghamton, New York, and which is now (2022) operated by the Central New York Railroad. The line is part of Norfolk Southern's Harrisburg Division and it is part of Norfolk Southern's Crescent Corridor, a railroad corridor. It passes through the approximately 5,000-foot Pattenburg Tunnel in West Portal, New Jersey, along its route. Most of the traffic along the line consists of intermodal and general merchandise trains going to yards such as Oak Island Yard in Newark, New Jersey, and Croxton Yard in Jersey City.

Passenger operations

The LVRR operated several named trains in the post-World War II era. Among them:

No. 11 The Star

No. 4 The Major

No. 7/8 The Maple Leaf

No. 9/10 The Black Diamond

No. 23/24 The Lehighton Express

No. 25/26 The Asa Packer, named for the LVRR's best-known president

No. 28/29 The John Wilkes

The primary passenger motive power for the LVRR in the diesel era was the ALCO PA-1 car body diesel-electric locomotive, of which the LVRR had fourteen. These locomotives were also used in freight service during and after the era of LVRR passenger service. A pair of ALCO FA-2 FB-2 car body diesel-electric locomotives were also purchased to augment the PAs when necessary. These were FAs with steam generators, but they were not designated as FPA-2 units.

Due to declining passenger patronage, the Lehigh Valley successfully petitioned the Interstate Commerce Commission to terminate all passenger service. This took effect on February 4, 1961. The Maple Leaf and the John Wilkes were the last operating long-distance trains, terminated that day. The only daylight New York-Buffalo train, the "Black Diamond", was discontinued in 1959. Budd Rail Diesel Car service would continue on a branch line (Lehighton-Hazleton) for an additional four days. The majority of passenger equipment is believed to have been scrapped some time after February 1961. Most serviceable equipment not retained for company service was sold to other roads.