The Cleveland Line 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 ...

line owned and operated by

Norfolk Southern Railway The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad in the United States formed in 1982 with the merger of Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway. With headquarters in Atlanta, the company operates 19,420 route miles (3 ...

(NS), in the

U.S. states In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...

Ohio Ohio () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Of the List of states and territories of the United States, fifty U.S. states, it is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 34th-l ...

and

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, Ma ...

. The line runs from

Rochester, Pennsylvania Rochester is a borough in central Beaver County, Pennsylvania, United States. Located northwest of Pittsburgh, it is part of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. The population was 3,480 at the 2020 census. Like many places around Pittsburgh, ...

to Cleveland, Ohio along a former

Pennsylvania Railroad The Pennsylvania Railroad (reporting mark PRR), legal name The Pennsylvania Railroad Company also known as the "Pennsy", was an American Class I railroad that was established in 1846 and headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was named ...

line.

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous U.S. States and nine cities in Canada ...

's ''

Capitol Limited The ''Capitol Limited'' is a daily Amtrak train between Washington, D.C., and Chicago, running via Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Service began in 1981 and was named after the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's '' Capitol Limited'' which ended in 1971 ...

'' uses the Cleveland Line between Cleveland and Alliance. Both the eastbound and westbound train are scheduled to use the line during midnight and early morning.

Routing

From Rochester, the line travels west following the Ohio River between

Beaver, Pennsylvania Beaver is a borough in and the county seat of Beaver County in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It is located at the confluence of the Beaver and Ohio Rivers, approximately northwest of Pittsburgh. As of the 2020 census, the borough population ...

and Yellow Creek Ohio, where the line turns northwest towards Cleveland. Along the way, the line junctions with the

Fort Wayne Line The Fort Wayne Line and Fort Wayne Secondary is a rail line owned and operated by the Norfolk Southern Railway (NS), Chicago, Fort Wayne and Eastern Railroad (CFE), and CSX Transportation in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. The line runs from Pit ...

Alliance, Ohio Alliance is a city in eastern Stark County, Ohio, United States. With a small district lying in adjacent Mahoning County, the city is approximately northeast of Canton, southwest of Youngstown and southeast of Cleveland. The population was 2 ...

. At Alliance, most traffic diverges off the Fort Wayne Line and on to the Cleveland Line in order to reach the Chicago Line in Cleveland. From Alliance, the line continues northwest, going through locations such as

Ravenna Ravenna ( , , also ; rgn, Ravèna) is the capital city of the Province of Ravenna, in the Emilia-Romagna region of Northern Italy. It was the capital city of the Western Roman Empire from 408 until its collapse in 476. It then served as the ca ...

, Hudson, and

Maple Heights Maple Heights is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States. It is a suburb of Cleveland. The population was 23,138 at the 2010 census. History Maple Heights Transit In 1935, the City created Maple Heights Transit to provide connections ...

until the line ends and merges with the Chicago Line in downtown Cleveland.

History

The Cleveland and Pittsburgh Railroad was chartered in 1836, due to public support in building a railroad line between Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Construction of the line was completed in 1852, with additional branch lines to

Akron, Ohio Akron () is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Summit County. It is located on the western edge of the Glaciated Allegheny Plateau, about south of downtown Cleveland. As of the 2020 Census, the city ...

and

Wheeling, West Virginia Wheeling is a city in the U.S. state of West Virginia. Located almost entirely in Ohio County, of which it is the county seat, it lies along the Ohio River in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains and also contains a tiny portion extendin ...

. In 1871, the C&P was leased to the

for a 999 year lease, thus, giving the PRR access to Cleveland. During the Pennsylvania Railroad years, the line mainly hosted

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

and

mineral In geology and mineralogy, a mineral or mineral species is, broadly speaking, a solid chemical compound with a fairly well-defined chemical composition and a specific crystal structure that occurs naturally in pure form.John P. Rafferty, ed. ...

trains from the

Ohio River Valley The Ohio River is a long river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing southwesterly from western Pennsylvania to its mouth on the Mississippi River at the southern tip of Illino ...

area that were bound for Cleveland. In 1968, the Pennsylvania Railroad merged with long time rival

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 Mi ...

, to form

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 the ...

. The merger essentially failed, which resulted in the Penn Central declaring bankruptcy by 1970. Conrail was created in 1976 to pick up the pieces of several railroads that had fallen into bankruptcy including the Penn Central. By 1981, Conrail was turning into a profitable operation, due in part to the

Staggers Rail Act The Staggers Rail Act of 1980 is a United States federal law that deregulated the American railroad industry to a significant extent, and it replaced the regulatory structure that had existed since the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. Backgroun ...

of 1980. Around this time, Conrail began upgrading the former C&P line between Alliance and Cleveland, as the line was soon to host several trains. Conrail began to remove all of the Chicago-bound train traffic that had previously used the

, and rerouted that traffic to the Chicago Line, using the Cleveland Line as the connector line. Upgrading of the line was eventually completed, and Conrail began routing a majority of Chicago bound traffic out of Pittsburgh to the line, to connect with the former New York Central mainline in Cleveland. Ownership of the line was passed on to

Norfolk Southern The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad in the United States formed in 1982 with the merger of Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway. With headquarters in Atlanta, the company operates 19,420 route miles (31, ...

after the Conrail split between

CSX Transportation CSX Transportation , known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Class I freight railroad operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. The railroad operates approximately 21,000 route miles () of track. ...

and Norfolk Southern in 1999.

References

External links

* {{cite web, url=http://thecrhs.org/OnLocationWithConrail/ClevelandLine, title=Conrail's Cleveland Line, work=thecrhs.org, access-date=2015-09-05, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120226100720/http://thecrhs.org/OnLocationWithConrail/ClevelandLine, archive-date=2012-02-26, url-status=dead
Blet659.org

, title=Conrail Pittsburgh Division Track Chart (Effective 1998)
Norfolk Southern Railway lines Rail infrastructure in Ohio Rail infrastructure in Pennsylvania Pennsylvania Railroad lines Conrail lines Rail transportation in Cleveland

Routing

History

See also

References

External links