Lehigh Valley Railroad

The Lehigh Valley Railroad (reporting markLV) was a railroad in the Northeastern United States built predominantly to haul anthracite coal from the Coal Region in Northeastern Pennsylvania to major consumer markets in Philadelphia, New York City, and elsewhere.

On April 21, 1846, the railroad was authorized to provide freight transportation of passengers, goods, wares, merchandise, and minerals in Pennsylvania. On September 20, 1847, the railroad was incorporated and established, initially called the Delaware, Lehigh, Schuylkill and Susquehanna Railroad Company.

On January 7, 1853, the railroad's name was changed to Lehigh Valley Railroad. It was sometimes known as the Route of the Black Diamond; black diamond is a slang word for anthracite, the high-end type of Pennsylvania coal that it initially transported by boat down the Lehigh River.

The Lehigh Valley Railroad's original and primary route between Easton and Allentown was built in 1855. The line later expanded past Allentown to Lehigh Valley Terminal in Buffalo and past Easton to New York City, bringing the Lehigh Valley Railroad to these metropolitan areas. By December 31, 1925, the railroad controlled 1,363.7 miles of road and 3,533.3 miles of track. By 1970, this had dwindled to 927 miles of road and 1963 miles of track.

The first small repair shops for locomotives and cars were located in Delano, Wilkes-Barre, Weatherly, Hazleton, and South Easton. In 1902 these were mostly consolidated into the shops at Sayre, Pennsylvania on the New York State border, which featured a 750 by 336-foot machine shop with 48 erecting pits. The shops in Packerton, Pennsylvania, located in the Coal Region north of Allentown, served as the primary freight car shops.

In 1976, the railroad ended operations and merged into Conrail along with several northeastern railroads that same year. Conrail maintained the line as a main line into the New York metropolitan area, and the line became known as the Lehigh Line during Conrail's ownership of it. In 1976, Conrail abandoned most of the route in New York state to Buffalo, considerably shortening the line.

The Lehigh Valley's Main Line is now in the ownership of four railroads. Conrail Shared Assets owns the line between Newark and Manville, New Jersey, and operates it as their Lehigh Line. The Norfolk Southern Railway owns and operates between Manville and Penn Haven Junction, Pennsylvania as their Lehigh Line. The Reading and Northern Railroad operates between Nesquehoning Junction and Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania, sharing the right-of-way with Norfolk Southern between the former and Penn Haven Junction. Finally, the Lehigh Railway operates between Tunkhannock and Sayre, Pennsylvania, on the border with New York.