Nesquehoning Valley Railroad

The Nesquehoning Valley Railroad Company,^[1] herein called the Nesquehoning Valley Railroad (NVRR), is a fallen flag standard-gauge, steam era shortline railroad built as a coal road to ship the Anthracite mined in the Panther Creek valley to the Eastern seaboard down the Lehigh River corridor. It was one of a variety of railroads which were subsidiaries of Lehigh Coal & Navigation, as that company successfully gathered additional capital from investors interested in riding its coat tails.

It's 38.521 miles (61.994 km) of track were located within Carbon County and Schuylkill Counties in the State of Pennsylvania, most of which was within the valley formed by the Nesquehoning Creek. 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 into coal mine trackage in Lansford, Pennsylvania. The Nesquehoning Valley Railroad embraces 38.521 miles (61.994 km) miles. The entire railroad was leased shortly after its construction to the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, 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 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, in the borough of Jim Thorpe) to its headwaters below the drainage divide from the Schuylkill at Hometown where it joined the Lehigh and Susquehanna to Mountain Top. 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 Hauto tunnel between the village and railyard at Hauto along the Nesquehoning Creek to the breaker]]s and coal yards in Lansford and the rest of the Panther Creek valley was completed in 1872.

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