The Port Reading Secondary, also known as the Port Reading Branch, is a railway line in
New Jersey
New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...
. It runs from a junction with the
Lehigh Line in
Bound Brook, New Jersey, to
Port Reading, New Jersey, on the
Arthur Kill. Originally built by the
Port Reading Railroad and part of the
Reading Company system, today the line belongs to
Conrail Shared Assets Operations (CSAO).
Route
The line diverges from the
Lehigh Line (formerly the main line of the
Lehigh Valley Railroad) at CP Bound Brook in
Bound Brook, New Jersey. From there it proceeds east to
Port Reading, New Jersey, on the
Arthur Kill. The line connects with the
Chemical Coast Secondary in Port Reading, just short of the yard there.
History
The
Port Reading Railroad was founded in 1890 by the
Philadelphia and Reading Railroad to build a line east from the existing
New York Branch to a point on the
Atlantic coast, where it would establish a new port. The line, long, opened in September 1892. The western end connected with the New York Branch at
Port Reading Junction in
Manville, New Jersey, on the west side of the
Raritan River
The Raritan River is a river of the U.S. state of New Jersey. Its Drainage basin, watershed drains much of the mountainous areas in the North Jersey, northern and Central Jersey, central sections of the state, emptying into the Raritan Bay near ...
.
The Philadelphia and Reading, and later the
Reading Company, controlled the Port Reading Railroad and the company was never merged into the corporate parent. On the Reading's final bankruptcy in 1976 the line was conveyed to
Conrail
Conrail , formally the Consolidated Rail Corporation, was the primary Class I railroad in the Northeastern United States between 1976 and 1999. The trade name Conrail is a portmanteau based on the company's legal name. It continues to do busine ...
. Conrail rationalized the trackage around Bound Brook, making a new connection between the former Lehigh Valley main line and the Port Reading line near
Bound Brook station, and abandoning the line west of there. When Conrail was split between
CSX
CSX Transportation , known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Railroad classes, Class I freight railroad company operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Operating about 21,000 route miles () of trac ...
and the
Norfolk Southern Railway
The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad operating in the Eastern United States. Headquartered in Atlanta, the company was formed in 1982 with the merger of the Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway. The comp ...
in 1999, the Port Reading Secondary remained with Conrail as part of
Conrail Shared Assets Operations.
Notes
References
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*
* {{cite book , title=Final system plan for restructuring railroads in the Northeast and Midwest region pursuant to the Regional Rail Reorganization Act of 1973 , year=1975 , author=United States Railway Association , author-link=United States Railway Association , location=Washington, DC , url=http://multimodalways.org/docs/govts/federal/executive/Agencies/DOT/USRA/FSP/FSP%20VI.pdf , oclc=2889148 , volume=1 , ref={{Harvid, USRA, 1975
Railway lines opened in 1892
Rail infrastructure in New Jersey
Conrail lines
Reading Company lines