Railroads of the Lehigh Coal and
Navigation Company
GROUP IX
By EARL J. HEYDINGER
RLHS Bulletin Vol 110,
Pages 59 - 62
THE MAUCH CHUNK RAILROAD
Pennsylvania's first railroad
and first anthracite carrier opened on Saturday, May 5th, 1827, when seven cars
of coal passed from the Summit Hill mines of the L. C. & N. Company to
their canal at Mauch Chunk, descending 936 feet in the nine-mile trip. Sixteen
year old Solomon White Roberts, later a noted railroad engineer, who had helped
his uncle, Josiah White, build the railroad, rode the first delivery of coal by
rail. Loaded cars made the trip in a half-hour; mules returned three or four
empties over the same route in three to four hours. Evidently the line had only
seven (or twenty-one) coal cars at the opening, as that number brought coal to
the canal on the following Monday and Tuesday also. These three days'
deliveries, twenty-one cars, deposited nearly a thousand tons of anthracite
into a chute over the canal boat landing. Loaded cars descending drew empties
from the bottom of this chute on a self-acting plane. Built in a period of four
months, on a turnpike previously used for coal wagons, the line, 12-1/2, miles
with sidings, cost $38,726. Ties were on four-foot centers; strap rail was
3/8" x 11/2".
Mules rode down with the
loaded cars, which they returned empty to the mines. Mauch Chunk quickly became
a tourist center, with a ride over the railroad as the main attraction. In 1830,
Hazard's reported the line shod with iron on the upper and inner edges of its
track. In 1845, the Back Track, with its famous Mt. Pisgah and Mt. Jefferson
Planes, increased traffic capabilities by returning empties over a separate
route and by dispensing with mule power. These planes were 664 feet high by
2322 feet long, and 462 feet high by 2070 feet long, respectively. A switchback
from Summit Hill to the Panther Creek mines had a 221-foot per mile grade and
was a part of the 1845 empty-car return system. Trackage in the mining valley
had a 60-foot per mile grade. Panther Creek Planes 1 and 2, 375 feet by 2436
feet and 250 feet by 2030 feet, were the beginning of the gravity loaded track
system to Mauch Chunk. Before 1850, four chutes, from 600 to 750 feet long,
inclined one in three, fed coal from the railroad to the canalboat landing. The
fourth chute, four by five feet, had an iron floor with plates 4' x 1' x
1/2" thick, and load-control gates every fifty feet.
This railroad system delivered all Summit Hill and Panther Valley coal to the Mauch Chunk canal landing and returned all empty cars until, in 1872, the Hauto Tunnel, extending 3800 feet from the Nesquehoning Valley to Panther Creek Valley, allowed locomotive operation. The tunnel headings met on September 15th, 1871, and the first train passed through on February Ist, 1872. To pay for this improvement, each passenger and each ton of anthracite paid five cents into a special fund. With this diversion of coal traffic, the pioneer Mauch Chunk road became solely a tourist attraction, operating until 1932.
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THE NESQUEHONING
RAILROAD
began
as Josiah White's Room (Rhume) Run Railroad in 1830, opened to traffic in 1833
as another gravity railroad with self-acting planes, which delivered its coal
tonnage from Room Run to landings at Nesquehoning Creek, about a mile above
Mauch Chunk. At this landing there was a self-acting plane, which lowered coal
to the canal, and, eventually, a water-powered breaker. This location at the
mouth of Nesquehoning Creek was known earlier as Lausanne, where Klotz kept the
"Landing Tavern." In 1831, Hazard's carried a statement, probably
contributed by Josiah White during the fight over the Catawissa-Danville and Pottsville
routes to the Susquehanna, telling that the grade on the Nesquehoning route to
the Catawissa Valley had a rise of only 254 feet in nine miles. This was a
partial truth, as the total rise from Nesquehoning to Tamanend alone was 468
feet.
Chartered on April 12th,
1861, the railroad extended westward from Mauch Chunk (1956's "Jim
Thorpe" sounds out of place) past Room Run 16-1/2 miles to Tamanend on the
Catawissa R. R. Leased for 999 years and completed by the L. C. & N.
Company, the line was opened on May 2nd, 1870, and passed with other L. C.
& N. railroads by lease to the Central R. R. of New Jersey. Costs were
$1,004,624 for the line and about three miles of siding, all laid with 60-lb.
rail. Passenger and freight trains soon ran in cooperation with the Catawissa
road. Pennsylvania Geological maps of 1883 show a proposed Mahanoy branch of
the N. R. R., from the mouth of East Mahanoy Tunnel, linked with Delano via an
inclined plane. The line from this tunnel, 3-1/2 miles in the opposite
direction to Hawks, on the Catawissa R. R., opened in February, 1885, having
cost $58,000.
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THE LEHIGH &
SUSQUEHANNA RAILROAD
The
second railroad built by the L. C. & N. Company linked White Haven with
Wilkes-Barre in the Third Coal Field. It was opened on July Ist, 1840 with
three planes at Ashley and an 1800-foot tunnel north of White Haven. Authorized
in 1827, early plans called for the planes to pass loaded canal boats between
the canals at White Haven and Wilkes-Barre. Locks, twenty feet by one hundred,
(one with a lift of thirty feet) passed coal transferred from this railroad to
boats at White Haven, from 1840 to 1862. Packet boats from Mauch Chunk operated
in conjunction with the horse-powered passenger cars of the railroad. Asa
Packer was interested in one of these lines. The only record of a boat passage
over the Ashley plane, found by the writer, was the trans-shipment of canal
boats marooned at White Haven by the 1862 flood. These craft were loaded with
L. C. & N. coal at Wilkes Barre, and passed through the Pennsylvania and
the Tidewater and Susquehanna Canals to the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal,
unloaded at Philadelphia, and returned to work on the Lehigh Canal below Mauch
Chunk.
The Penn Haven & White Haven
R. R. was opened on June 14th, 1S64, sponsored by the Lehigh Valley R. R., and
was projected to link the Beaver Meadow R. R. with the L. & S. at White
Haven, but the destruction of the upper Lehigh Canal caused the L. C. & N.
Company to extend the L. & S. to Easton, Pa. The first L. & S. train
ran between Penn Haven and Wilkes-Barre, on December 31st, 1866, and
Scranton-Easton passenger and freight service began on February 3rd, 1868. For
aiding the L. V. R. R. obtain its 1867 right of way through White Haven, that
former coal port lost its L. C. & N. shops to Ashley. While the L. C. &
N. lost the Buck Mountain coal to the Hazleton R. R., branches of the new L.
& S. tapped the upper Second Coal Field. By 1895 this road had these coal
branches: the Beaver Meadow, Tresckow & New Boston, 2.17 miles from
Tresckow Jet. to Colraine; a 10.94-mile line from Drifton Jet. to Drifton; a
branch from Pond Creek Jet., extending 2.58 miles to Sandy Run and .45 miles to
Zehner, opened in 1878; and the 5.2-mile Tunnel Branch, Hauto to Greenwood,
near Tamaqua. All of these lines and the L. & S. fed L. C. & N. coal to
the Jersey. Central.
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THE TRESCKOW RAILROAD
Incorporated on May 26th, 1870,
after acquisition of coal lands south of Hazleton by the L. C. & N.
Company, this anthracite line extended 7.5 miles from Audenreid to Silverbrook.
It was leased to the Jersey Central for 999 years, on March 31st, 1871, for
one-third of its receipts. It used the Silverbrook branch of the Catawissa and
the Catawissa R. R. for about five miles to the Nesquehoning R. R. at Tamanend,
until the P. & R. opened its Tamaqua, Hazleton & Northern R. R. in
1892. The only section of the T. H. & N., existing in 1956 is that portion
used by the Jersey Central from the Tresckow R. R. down to Lofty.
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THE LEHIGH & NEW
ENGLAND RAILROAD
The
last extensive new railroad construction in the First Coal Field was the Lehigh
& New En-land, financed by the L. C. & N. Co., in 1911-12. The 33-mile
extension from Danielsville to Tamaqua was opened on July 8th, 1912. Trackage
for the new road included rights between Tamaqua and Hauto, and on the branch
between Lansford and Summit Hill. The L. & N. E. parallels the Little
Schuylkill R. R. of the P. & R - southward from Tamaqua along the Little
Schuylkill River, bearing eastward into Lizard Creek Valley to reach the Lehigh
River at Blue Mountain Gap, below Palmerton. It parallels the proposed route of
the 1863 Schuylkill Haven & Lehigh River R. R., and the 1890-1953
Schuylkill & Lehigh Valley R. R. Its high bridge over the Lehigh River at
the Blue Mountain Gap, visible from L. V. trains, carries the line from the
north to the south side of the Blue Mountain, crossing the L. V. R. R. the
Lehigh River and Canal, the Central R. R. of Pennsylvania (former L. & S.),
and Pennsylvania Highways 45 and 309. In addition, the junction with the
Chestnut Ridge R. R. on the east shore is a part of this crossing.
It is a most interesting coincidence that this youngest anthracite
line, the L. & N. E., was financed by the L. C. & N. Company, which
built Pennsylvania's pioneer Mauch Chunk R. R. in 1827