Anthracite Railroads Historical Society, Inc. (ARHS) is a non-profit organization founded in 1974 to preserve historic anthracite hauling railroads of eastern Pennsylvania. [1] The railroads that ARHS is responsible for preserving include: [2]
The ARHS owns various pieces of rolling stock either depicting an Anthracite Road or a genuine piece of Anthracite Road history.[ citation needed ]
ARHS publishes The Anthracite Extra newsletter and Flags, Diamonds and Statues magazine. [3]
Jim Thorpe is a borough and the county seat of Carbon County in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It is part of Northeastern Pennsylvania. It is historically known as the burial site of Native American sports legend Jim Thorpe.
White Haven is a borough in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located along the Lehigh River. The population was 1,163 at the 2020 census.
Easton is a city in and the county seat of Northampton County, Pennsylvania, United States. The city's population was 28,127 as of the 2020 census. Easton is located at the confluence of the Lehigh River, a 109-mile-long (175 km) river that joins the Delaware River in Easton and serves as the city's eastern geographic boundary with Phillipsburg, New Jersey.
The Morris Canal (1829–1924) was a 107-mile (172 km) common carrier anthracite coal canal across northern New Jersey that connected the two industrial canals in Easton, Pennsylvania across the Delaware River from its western terminus at Phillipsburg, New Jersey to New York Harbor and New York City through its eastern terminals in Newark and on the Hudson River in Jersey City. The canal was sometimes called the Morris and Essex Canal, in error, due to confusion with the nearby and unrelated Morris and Essex Railroad.
The Lehigh Valley Railroad 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.
The Reading Company was a Philadelphia-headquartered railroad that provided passenger and freight transport in eastern Pennsylvania and neighboring states from 1924 until its acquisition by Conrail in 1976.
The Coal Region is a region of Northeastern Pennsylvania. It is known for being home to the largest known deposits of anthracite coal in the world with an estimated reserve of seven billion short tons.
The Delaware and Hudson Railway (D&H) is a railroad that operates in the Northeastern United States. In 1991, after more than 150 years as an independent railroad, the D&H was purchased by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CP). CP, which would itself become part of Canadian Pacific Kansas City in 2023, operated D&H under its subsidiary Soo Line Corporation, which also operates Soo Line Railroad.
This is a list of the earliest railroads in North America, including various railroad-like precursors to the general modern form of a company or government agency operating locomotive-drawn trains on metal tracks.
The Schuylkill Canal, or Schuylkill Navigation, was a system of interconnected canals and slack-water pools along the Schuylkill River in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, built as a commercial waterway in the early 19th-century. Chartered in 1815, the navigation opened in 1825, to provide transportation and water power.
North Pennsylvania Railroad was a railroad company which served Philadelphia, Montgomery County, Bucks County and Northampton County in Pennsylvania. It was formed in 1852, and began operation in 1855. The Philadelphia and Reading Railway, predecessor to the Reading Company, leased the North Pennsylvania in 1879. Its tracks were transferred to Conrail and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) in 1976.
The Lehigh Crane Iron Company, later renamed Crane Iron Company, was a major ironmaking firm in the Lehigh Valley from its founding in 1839 until its sale in 1899. It was based in Catasauqua, Pennsylvania, and was founded by Josiah White and Erskine Hazard, who financed its development through their Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, which promoted the then-novel technique of smelting iron ore with anthracite coal. This was an important cost and energy savings technique, credited with eliminating the need for either expensive charcoal or coke producing processes and transport costs that proved central to the acceleration of the American Industrial Revolution.
The Delaware Division of the Pennsylvania Canal, more commonly called the Delaware Canal, runs for 60 miles (97 km) parallel to the right bank of the Delaware River from the entry locks near the mouth of the Lehigh River and terminal end of the Lehigh Canal at Easton south to Bristol. At Easton, which today is the home of The National Canal Museum, the Delaware Canal also connected with the Morris Canal built to carry anthracite coal to energy-starved New Jersey industries.
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. The lower section spanned the distance between Easton and present-day Jim Thorpe. In Easton, the canal met the Pennsylvania Canal's Delaware Division and Morris Canals, which allowed anthracite coal and other goods to be transported further up the U.S. East Coast. At its height, the Lehigh Canal was 72 miles (116 km) long.
The Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad, colloquially known as the "Ma and Pa", was an American short-line railroad between York and Hanover, Pennsylvania, formerly operating passenger and freight trains on its original line between York and Baltimore, Maryland, from 1901 until the 1950s. The Ma and Pa was popular with railfans in the 1930s and 1940s for its antique equipment and curving, picturesque right-of-way through the hills of rural Maryland and Pennsylvania. Reflecting its origin as the unintended product of the merger of two 19th-century narrow-gauge railways, the meandering main line took 77.2 miles (124 km) to connect Baltimore and York, although the two cities are only 45 miles (72 km) apart.
Lock Ridge Park is a park built around a historic iron ore blast furnace just outside Alburtis, Pennsylvania in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania.
Delaware & Lehigh Canal National and State Heritage Corridor (DLNHC) is a 165-mile (266 km) National Heritage Area in eastern Pennsylvania in the United States. It stretches from north to south, across five counties and over one hundred municipalities. It follows the historic routes of the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad, Lehigh Valley Railroad, the Lehigh Navigation, Lehigh Canal, and the Delaware Canal, from Bristol northeast of Philadelphia to Wilkes-Barre in the northeastern part of the state.
The Mauch Chunk Switchback Railway, also known as the Mauch Chunk and Summit Railroad and occasionally shortened to Mauch Chunk Railway, was a coal-hauling railroad in the mountains of Pennsylvania that was built in 1827 and operated until 1932. It was the second gravity railway constructed in the United States, which was used by the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company to transport coal from Summit Hill downhill to the Lehigh canal.
The Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company (LCAN) (1988–2010) was a modern-day anthracite coal mining company headquartered in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. It acquired many properties and relaunched the Lehigh Coal Companies brand in 1988. The LCAN ran strip mining operations in the Panther Creek Valley east of Lansford, Pennsylvania along U.S. Route 209 with vast properties dominating the coal areas of Tamaqua, Coaldale, and Lansford.
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 the American Industrial Revolution.