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Former American railroad

The Lehigh Valley Railroad was a railroad in the Northeastern United States built predominantly to haul anthracite coal from the Coal Region in Northeastern Pennsylvania to major consumer markets in Philadelphia, New York City, and elsewhere. On April 21, 1846, the railroad was authorized to provide freight transportation of passengers, goods, wares, merchandise, and minerals in Pennsylvania. On September 20, 1847, the railroad was incorporated and established, initially called the Delaware, Lehigh, Schuylkill and Susquehanna Railroad Company. On January 7, 1853, the railroad's name was changed to Lehigh Valley Railroad. Little occurred between 1847 and 1851, save some limited grading near Allentown, Pennsylvania. All this changed in October 1851, when Asa Packer took majority control of the DLS&S. Packer brought additional financing to the railroad, installed Robert H. Sayre as chief engineer, and renamed the company the "Lehigh Valley Railroad." Construction began in earnest in 1853, and the line opened between Easton and Allentown on June 11, 1855. The section between Allentown and Mauch Chunk opened on September 12. At Easton, the LVRR interchanged coal at the Delaware River where coal could be shipped to Philadelphia on the Delaware Division Canal or transported across the river to Phillipsburg, New Jersey, where the Morris Canal and the Central Railroad of New Jersey (CNJ) could carry it to the New York City market. At Easton, the LVRR constructed a double decked bridge across the Delaware River for connections to the CNJ and the Belvidere Delaware Railroad in Phillipsburg. Through a connection with the Central Railroad of New Jersey, LVRR passengers had a route to Newark, New Jersey, Jersey City, New Jersey, and other points in New Jersey. 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 4893 feet (1491 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, 1191 feet (363 m) iron bridge. 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. 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. Unfortunately, it overreached and in 1893 was unable to meet its obligations. Its bankruptcy resulted in economic chaos, bringing on the financial panic of 1893 and forcing the LVRR to break the lease and resume its own operations, leaving it unable to pay dividends on its stock until 1904. The economic depression following 1893 was harsh, and by 1897 the LVRR was in dire need of support. The banking giant J. P. Morgan stepped in to refinance the LVRR debt and obtained control of the railroad in the process. Ousting President Elisha P. Wilbur and several directors in 1897, the Morgan company installed W. Alfred Walter as president and seated its own directors. In 1901, Morgan arranged to have the Packer Estate's holdings purchased jointly by the Erie, the Pennsylvania, the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway, the DL&W and the CNJ, all companies in which Morgan had interests. Newly elected president Eben B. Thomas, formerly of the Erie, and his board of directors represented the combined interests of those railroads. A final attempt to establish a coal cartel took place in 1904 with the formation of the Temple Iron Company. Prior to that time, the Temple Iron Company was a small concern that happened to have a broad charter allowing it to act as a holding company. The Reading, now out of receivership, purchased the company and brought the other coal railroads into the partnership, with the Reading owning 30%, the LVRR 23%, the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western 20%, CNJ 17%, Erie 6%, and New York, Susquehanna and Western 4 percent. The purpose of the Temple Iron Company was to lock up independent coal production and control the supply. Congress reacted with the 1906 Hepburn Act, which among other things forbade railroads from owning the commodities that they transported. A long series of antitrust investigations and lawsuits resulted, culminating in a 1911 Supreme Court decision that forced the LVRR to divest itself of the coal companies it had held since 1868. The LVRR shareholders received shares of the now independent Lehigh Valley Coal Company, but the railroad no longer had management control of the production, contracts, and sales of its largest customer. In 1896, the very early film Black Diamond Express was produced by Thomas A. Edison's company Kinetoscope. The train arrives from far away and passes the camera, while workers are waving their handkerchiefs.

Grain tonnage was increasing and the company transported large quantities from Buffalo to Philadelphia and other Eastern markets. Also, in 1914 the Panama Canal was completed, and the LVRR gained an important new market with ores shipped from South America to the Bethlehem Steel company. In order to handle the additional new ocean traffic, the LVRR created a large new pier at Constable Hook, which opened in 1915, and a new terminal at Claremont which opened in 1923. It also built a passenger terminal in Buffalo in 1915. Since 1896 the LVRR had run an important and prestigious express train named the "Black Diamond" which carried passengers to the Finger Lakes and Buffalo. Additional passenger trains ran from Philadelphia to Scranton and westward. From the beginning, the LVRR's New York City passengers had used the Pennsylvania Railroad's terminal and ferry at Jersey City, but in 1913 the PRR terminated that agreement, so the LVRR contracted with the CNJ for use of its terminal and ferry, which was expanded to handle the increased number of passengers. The railroad also published a monthly magazine promoting travel on the train called the "Black Diamond Express Monthly". In the war years 1914 to 1918, the Lehigh handled war materials and explosives at its Black Tom island facility, which had been obtained along with the National Docks Railroad in 1900. In 1916, a horrendous explosion occurred at the facility, destroying ships and buildings, and breaking windows in Manhattan. At first the incident was considered an accident; a long investigation eventually concluded that the explosion was an act of German sabotage, for which reparations were finally paid in 1979. After the U. S. entered World War I, the railroads were nationalized in order to prevent strikes and interruptions. The United States Railroad Administration controlled the railroad from 1918 to 1920, at which time control was transferred back to the private companies. Although the heavy wartime traffic had left the railroad's plant and equipment in need of repair, the damage was partly offset by new equipment that had been purchased by the government. In 1920, the LVRR sold its lake line company, the Lehigh Valley Transportation Line, to private interests due to new federal legislation which stopped the practice of railroads owning lake lines. The Lehigh Valley Railroad remained in operation during the 1970 bankruptcy, as was the common practice of the time. In 1972, the Lehigh Valley Railroad assumed the remaining Pennsylvania trackage of the Central Railroad of New Jersey, a competing anthracite railroad which had entered bankruptcy as well. The two roads had entered a shared trackage agreement in this area in 1965 to reduce costs, as both had parallel routes from Wilkes Barre virtually all the way to metropolitan New York, often on adjoining grades through Pennsylvania. In the years leading to 1973, the freight railroad system in the northeast of the U. S. was collapsing. Although government funded Amtrak took over intercity passenger service on May 1, 1971, railroad companies continued to lose money due to extensive government regulations, expensive and excessive labor cost, competition from other transportation modes, declining industrial business and other factors; the Lehigh Valley Railroad was one of them. Hurricane Agnes in 1972 damaged the rundown Northeast railway network, which put the solvency of other railroads including the LVRR in danger; the somewhat more solvent Erie Lackawanna Railway (EL) was also damaged by Hurricane Agnes. In 1973, the United States Congress acted to create a bill to nationalize all bankrupt railroads which included the LV. The Association of American Railroads, which opposed nationalization, submitted an alternate proposal for a government funded private company. President Richard Nixon signed the Regional Rail Reorganization Act of 1973 into law. The "3R Act," as it was called, provided interim funding to the bankrupt railroads and defined a new "Consolidated Rail Corporation" under the AAR's plan. On April 1, 1976, the LVRR, including its main line, was merged into the U. S. government's Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail) ending 130 years of existence and 121 years of operation of the LVRR.

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.

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. The first locomotive purchased by the LVRR was the "Delaware", a wood burning 4 4 0 built by Richard Norris & Sons of Philadelphia in 1855. It was followed by the "Catasauqua" 4 4 0 and "Lehigh" 4 6 0, which were also Norris & Sons engines. In 1856, the "E. A. Packer" 4 4 0 was purchased from William Mason of Taunton, Massachusetts. Subsequently, the LVRR favored engines from Baldwin Locomotive Works and William Mason, but tried many other designs as it experimented with motive power that could handle the line's heavy grades. 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.

Mayor Term Notes James Madison Porter 1847–1856James Madison Porter was the first President of the Lehigh Valley Railroad. William Wilson Longstreth 1856 John Gillingham Fell 1856–1862Asa Packer 1862–1864This was his first term. William Wilson Longstreth 1864–1868Asa Packer 1868–1879This was his second term. Charles Hartshorne 1879–1882 Harry E. Packer 1882–1884 Elisha Packer Wilbur 1884–1897 W. Alfred Walter 1897–1902 Eben B. Thomas 1902–1917 Edward Eugene Loomis 1917–1937 Duncan J. Kerr 1937–1939 R. W. Barrett 1939 Albert N. Williams 1939–1941 Revelle W. Brown 1941–1944 Felix R. Gerard 1944–1947 Cedric A. Major 1947–1960 C. W. Baker 1960 Colby M. Chester 1960–1962He served as chairman of the board while the presidency was vacant until PRR takeover. Allen J. Greenough 1962–1965 John Francis Nash 1965–1974Bankruptcy trustee July 1970–August 1974. Robert Haldeman 1970–1976Bankruptcy trustee from August 1974 to April 1976.