R.J. Corman Railroad/Pennsylvania Lines is a

railroad Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...

in the

R.J. Corman Railroad Group R. J. Corman Railroad Group, LLC is a privately owned railroad services and short line operating company headquartered in Nicholasville, KY, with field locations in 22 states. It was owned by Richard J. Corman, who established the company in ...

, operating a number of lines in central

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

. It primarily carries

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when ...

between

mine Mine, mines, miners or mining may refer to: Extraction or digging * Miner, a person engaged in mining or digging *Mining, extraction of mineral resources from the ground through a mine Grammar *Mine, a first-person English possessive pronoun ...

s and Norfolk Southern Railway connections at Cresson and Keating. The trackage was acquired from Conrail in 1996, when the latter company sold its "Clearfield Cluster"; Norfolk Southern acquired nearby Conrail lines in 1999. This is the longest R.J. Corman owned line, at over 300 miles in length.

History

RJCP trackage includes lines formerly owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad (from the Cambria and Clearfield Railway),

New York Central Railroad The New York Central Railroad was a railroad primarily operating in the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The railroad primarily connected greater New York and Boston in the east with Chicago and St. Louis in the Mid ...

(through its

Beech Creek Railroad The Beech Creek Railroad is a defunct railroad which operated in central Pennsylvania between Jersey Shore and Mahaffey. Originally chartered in 1882, it was leased by the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad (later the New York Central Ra ...

and Beech Creek Extension Railroad subsidiaries), and the jointly-controlled Cherry Tree and Dixonville Railroad. Interstate Commerce Commission, 22 Val. Rep. 1
Valuation Docket No. 928, The Pennsylvania Railroad Company et al.
(1929) Interstate Commerce Commission, 27 Val. Rep. 1: Valuation Docket No. 1022, The New York Central Railroad Company and its Leased Lines (1929) Interstate Commerce Commission, 22 Val. Rep. 1
Valuation Docket No. 877, Cherry Tree and Dixonville Railroad Company
(1929) The company came under common control with the 1968 creation of the

Penn Central Transportation Company The Penn Central Transportation Company, commonly abbreviated to Penn Central, was an American class I railroad that operated from 1968 to 1976. Penn Central combined three traditional corporate rivals (the Pennsylvania, New York Central and th ...

, and passed to Conrail in 1976, which decided to sell the lines, which it called the "Clearfield Cluster", in 1995. RJCP began operating them on January 2, 1996. The sale included the following lines, as well as a number of other branches: * Cresson (on Conrail's

Pittsburgh Line The Pittsburgh Line is the Norfolk Southern Railway's primary east–west artery in its Pittsburgh Division and Harrisburg Division across the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and is part of the Keystone Corridor, Amtrak-Norfolk Southern's combin ...

) to Mahaffey (ex-PRR) *Cresson to Flinton (ex-PRR) *Mahaffey to

Cherry Tree A cherry is the fruit of many plants of the genus ''Prunus'', and is a fleshy drupe (stone fruit). Commercial cherries are obtained from cultivars of several species, such as the sweet ''Prunus avium'' and the sour ''Prunus cerasus''. The na ...

(ex-NYC) *Cherry Tree to Dixonville (ex-CT&D) *Mahaffey to

Curwensville Curwensville is a borough in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, United States, north of Altoona on the West Branch Susquehanna River. Coal mining, tanning, and the manufacture of fire bricks were the industries at the turn of the 20th century. In 1 ...

(ex-NYC) * Clearfield to Keating (on Conrail's Buffalo Line) (ex-NYC) *Clearfield to Wallaceton (ex-NYC) *Wallaceton to Osceola Mills (ex-PRR): abandonment authorized in 2001 Between Curwensville and Clearfield, Conrail operated via

trackage rights Railway companies can interact with and control others in many ways. These relationships can be complicated by bankruptcies. Operating Often, when a railroad first opens, it is only a short spur of a main line. The owner of the spur line may ...

over the Clearfield and Mahoning Railway (C&M), subsidiary of the Buffalo and Pittsburgh Railroad (B&P), which had acquired it from CSX Transportation. B&P operations were terminated in 1992, when the line west of Curwensville was abandoned, and Conrail acquired control of the C&M in a late 1992-early 1993 swap, where the B&P acquired an isolated Conrail line for operation as Bradford Industrial Rail. Conrail sold the C&M to Richard J. Corman, owner of RJCP, effective January 26, 1996, and it remains a

non-operating subsidiary In the United States, a paper railroad is a company in the railroad business that exists "on paper only": as a legal entity which does not own any track, locomotives, or rolling stock. In the early days of railroad construction, paper railroads h ...

Trail to Rails

In May 2012, the Surface Transportation Board granted the railroad permission to reclaim 20 miles of track in

Clarence, Pennsylvania Clarence is a census-designated place (CDP) in Centre County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is part of the State College, Pennsylvania Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 626 at the 2010 census. Geography Clarence is located in n ...

abandoned by Conrail in 1990, 10 miles which had been converted into the Snow Shoe Rails to Trails. The decision was a major victory for both the company and the railroad industry in general, as there are few instances in the U.S. where an abandoned corridor-turned- rail trail has reverted to an active railroad.

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:R.J. Corman Railroad Pennsylvania Lines Pennsylvania railroads Railway companies established in 1996 Spin-offs of Conrail