The Nesquehoning Valley Railroad Company,L.K. Strouse, 1929
Interstate Commerce Commission Reports
Decisions of the Interstate Commerce Commission of the United States, Volume 149 herein called the Nesquehoning Valley Railroad (NVRR), is now a fallen flag standard-gauge, steam era

shortline railroad A shortline railroad is a small or mid-sized railroad company that operates over a relatively short distance relative to larger, national railroad networks. The term is used primarily in the United States and Canada. In the former, railroads are ...

built as a coal road to ship the

Anthracite Anthracite, also known as hard coal and black coal, is a hard, compact variety of coal that has a lustre (mineralogy)#Submetallic lustre, submetallic lustre. It has the highest carbon content, the fewest impurities, and the highest energy densit ...

mined in the Southeastern Coal Region on either side of the

Little Schuylkill River The Little Schuylkill River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed April 1, 2011 tributary of the Schuylkill River in Northeastern Pennsylvania. It rises south of McAdoo H ...

tributary Panther Creek and the history making coal towns of the

Panther Creek Valley Panther Creek Valley was historically the site of mining towns in eastern Pennsylvania. Since 1992, the Panther Creek Valley Foundation has managed the Number Nine Coal Mine and Museum in Lansford, Pennsylvania. Geologically, Panther Creek Valle ...

down the

Lehigh River The Lehigh River () is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed April 1, 2011 tributary of the Delaware River in eastern Pennsylvania. The river flows in a generally southward ...

transportation corridor to the Eastern seaboard. Sources_of_Nesquehoning_creek_from_hzlt93sw_map_excerpt%2C_drainage_divides_antd-en

It was one of a variety of regional railroads which were subsidiaries of

Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company was a mining and transportation company headquartered in Mauch Chunk, now known as Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. The company operated from 1818 until its dissolution in 1964 and played an early and influential role in ...

(LC&N), wherein the LC&N company financed part of the joint venture with outside interests; and often later bought a majority share or merged the railway into its railroad operating subsidiary,

Lehigh & Susquehanna Railroad The Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad is a defunct railroad that operated in eastern Pennsylvania during the 19th and 20th centuries. The company was a subsidiary of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company (LC&N). For much of its lifetime, however, it ...

(LH&S). Its of track were located within Carbon County and Schuylkill Counties in the State of Pennsylvania, less than half of which was within the valley formed by the

Nesquehoning Creek Nesquehoning Creek is an east flowing tributary of the Lehigh River in northeastern Pennsylvania in the United States.Gertler, Edward. ''Keystone Canoeing'', Seneca Press, 2004. Nesquehoning Creek joins the Lehigh River 2 miles (3.2 ...

, which ascent was straight forward. The majority of the track is thus in the Schuylkill Basin using more curvaceous climbing. The road had virtually no rolling stock, instead being an example of a shortline built in a corridor that was a necessary choice and then leveraging the niche established against the needs of operating rail companies. The owned mileage extends in a westerly direction from Nesquehoning Junction to Tamenend, 16.719 miles, with a line 0.955 mile in length leaving the above-described road in the village of Hauto, and extending southerly through the

Hauto Tunnel The Hauto Tunnel, dug in 1871–72, was a single-track railway tunnel crossing under the barrier ridge of Nesquehoning Mountain between Lansford, Pennsylvania, in the Panther Creek Valley and the Central Railroad of New Jersey trackage near the ...

into coal mine trackage in

Lansford, Pennsylvania Lansford is a border, county-border borough (Pennsylvania), borough (town) in Carbon County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is part of Northeastern Pennsylvania. It is located northwest of Allentown, Pennsylvania, Allentown and 19 miles south ...

. The Nesquehoning Valley Railroad embraces . The entire railroad was leased shortly after its construction to the

, which in turn subleased 16.719 miles to The Central Railroad Company of New Jersey (CNJ, or Jersey Central) and 0.955 mile to the

Lehigh and New England Railroad The Lehigh and New England Railroad was a Class I railroad located in Northeastern United States that acted as a bridge line. It was the second notable U.S. railroad to file for abandonment in its entirety after the New York, Ontario and Weste ...

Company.

Development

The ''Nesquehoning Valley Railroad'' was incorporated by special act of Pennsylvania approved May 14, 1861, for the purpose of constructing a railroad from a point near the mouth of the Nesquehoning Creek (known now as Nesquehoning Junction and the former

Lausanne Landing Lausanne Landing, Pennsylvania was a small settlement at the mouth of Nesquehoning Creek on the Lehigh River. Some historic references will mention the presence of a Landing Tavern as the entirety of the town. Lausanne Township was originally or ...

, in the borough of Jim Thorpe) where it joined the

Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad The Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad is a defunct railroad that operated in eastern Pennsylvania during the 19th and 20th centuries. The company was a subsidiary of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company (LC&N). For much of its lifetime, however, it ...

between Easton-

Mountain Top A summit is a point on a surface that is higher in elevation than all points immediately adjacent to it. The topographic terms acme, apex, peak (mountain peak), and zenith are synonymous. The term (mountain top) is generally used only for a ...

from whence it began to climb, struggling steadily upwards in a long climb beside

with

Nesquehoning Ridge Nesquehoning MountainUSGS Geographic Names Information System
s ...

to the south, and Broad Mountain to the north up past the streams' headwaters below the

drainage divide A drainage divide, water divide, ridgeline, watershed, water parting or height of land is elevated terrain that separates neighboring drainage basins. On rugged land, the divide lies along topographical ridges, and may be in the form of a single ...

at Hometown in the saddle of the pass. From there the road dropped down westerly into the valley of

where it took a convoluted path entering Tamaqua where it connected to the

Panther Creek Railroad The Panther Creek Railroad had its origins in 1849. The Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company ( LC&N) constructed it between Lansford, PA and the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad operating as the Little Schuylkill Railroad in Tamaqua, PA. LC&N belie ...

and the

Philadelphia and Reading Railway The Reading Company ( ) was a Philadelphia-headquartered rail transport, railroad that provided passenger and freight transport in eastern Pennsylvania and neighboring states from 1924 until its acquisition by Conrail in 1976. Commonly called th ...

(Reading Railroad) at Tamaqua Junction. The Nesquehoning Valley Railroad also enjoys the powers and is subject to the restrictions of a general law approved February 19, 1849. In 1861 the Nesquehoning Valley Railroad began the construction of its road. The work was temporarily suspended in the latter part of the year 1862, but was resumed in 1868. The main line was completed in April, 1870, and the

between the village and railyard at Hauto along the

to the coal breakers and coal yards in

, and the rest of the

was completed in 1872, as a joint-effort of the CNJ, the new lessee of the

subsidiary of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company. The Nesquehoning Valley Railroad would in time connect the

Lehigh Canal The Lehigh Canal is a navigable canal that begins at the mouth of Nesquehoning Creek on the Lehigh River in the Lehigh Valley and Northeastern regions of Pennsylvania. It was built in two sections over a span of 20 years beginning in 1818. Th ...

and CNJ's customers to the coal deposits around Mahanoy City, and those deposits in the Panther Creek to customers beyond in the lower Susquehanna Valley. With the strength of this connective flexibility, the roadbed of the NVRR is still in use today as an important standard E-W rail corridor, today operated by the Reading, Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad.

References

{{reflist History of Carbon County, Pennsylvania History of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania