Railroads of the Lehigh Coal and
Navigation Company
GROUP IX
By EARL J. HEYDINGER
Vol.
110 p. 59
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
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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
horsepowered 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
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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
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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