Mountain Top Yard

Last updated August 13, 2019

Mountain Top yard or Penobscot yard is a rail yard in Mountain Top, Pennsylvania. It was built by the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company (LC&N) in response to an 1837 bill authorizing a right of way and was established by 1840, at least as a construction camp for the Ashley Planes, in support of the construction of the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad trackage and operations to join the northern Anthracite Coal Region from barge loading docks along the Susquehanna (above and below the Navigations of the Pennsylvania Canal) in Pittston in the Wyoming Valley with the Lehigh Canal.

A rail yard, railway yard or railroad yard is a complex series of railroad tracks for storing, sorting, or loading and unloading, railroad cars and locomotives. Railroad yards have many tracks in parallel for keeping rolling stock stored off the mainline, so that they do not obstruct the flow of traffic. Railroad cars are moved around by specially designed yard switchers, a type of locomotive. Cars in a railroad yard may be sorted by numerous categories, including railroad company, loaded or unloaded, destination, car type, or whether they need repairs. Railroad yards are normally built where there is a need to store cars while they are not being loaded or unloaded, or are waiting to be assembled into trains. Large yards may have a tower to control operations.

Mountain Top is a census-designated place (CDP) in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, United States. As of the 2010 census, the CDP population was 10,982.

This article is about the company that operated from 1822-1967. For the corporation launched in 1988, see Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company.

History

Penobscot Knob or Mount Penobscot looming above the local terrain was one of the last terrain obstacles to north-south travel — following after several barrier ranges in the ridge-and-valley Appalachians above the improvements to the Lehigh River allowing water transport over 80 miles inland from Philadelphia's piers — a barrier therefore preventing west to east shipping of coal in the fading days of the canal era, but one in which railroad technology was leaping ahead year by year. LC&N, a high-tech company and major corporation of the 1820s-1870s, had already built the Lehigh Canal and the country's second railroad, the Mauch Chunk & Summit Hill Railroad to ship coal the ten miles of gravity railroad to the loading facility above the head end of the improved Navigations Lehigh River and the Delaware Canal and Delaware River.

Penobscot Knob, also Penobscot Mountain, is a summit located in the western fringe of the Poconos nearest to Mountain Top, Pennsylvania which in the Solomon Gap pass below it lies an important multi-modal transportation corridor. At one time before incorporation, Mountain Top and the saddle of the pass was known by the Amerindian name Penobscot. Penobscot Mountain forms part of the drainage divide between the Lehigh Valley & greater Delaware River drainage basin and the Wyoming and Susquehanna Valley, part of the Potomac River drainage basin. The pass formed between Penobscot and Haystack Mountain a few thousand feet to the West was one of the few places a railroad could be envisioned in the 1830s when the fuel crises in eastern cities demanded easier transportation to the Northern Anthracite Coal Fields, which ironically, came to be exploited by the company with a near monopoly in providing coal from the Southern Anthracite region, Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, which had built both the Lehigh Canal, but also the nation's second railway, the Summit Hill & Mauch Chunk Railroad. The whole uplands north and west faces over look the Wyoming Valley from the southeastern corner near Hazleton towards and through the greater south Wilkes-Barre area. The southern and eastern slopes just give peeks into portions of the Poconos and wider views of the Lehigh Valley descending down to White Haven, for the Poconos technically are left-bank bounded by the Lehigh.

The Lehigh River, a tributary of the Delaware River, is a 109-mile-long (175 km) river located in eastern Pennsylvania, in the United States. Part of the Lehigh, along with a number of its tributaries, is designated a Pennsylvania Scenic River by the state's Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. "Lehigh" is an Anglicization of the Lenape name for the river, Lechewuekink, meaning "where there are forks".

The Lehigh Canal or the Lehigh Navigation Canal is a navigable canal, beginning at the mouth of Nesquehoning Creek on the Lehigh River in Eastern Pennsylvania. It was built in two sections over a span of twenty years, beginning in 1818. The lower section spanned the distance between Easton, Pennsylvania and the town of Mauch Chunk, present-day Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. In Easton the canal met the Delaware and Morris Canals, with which goods could be brought further up the east coast. At its height, the Lehigh Canal was 72 miles (116 km) long.

The large yard, and the purpose built company town, Sayre, Pennsylvania were founded as part of a planned program of expansion and extension to the young railroad's infrastructure—the yard was but one benchmark on the way to completing the goal of establishing competitive passenger rail service between New York City, as well as cities in Delaware such as Wilmington, cities in central New Jersey such as Trenton, and Eastern Pennsylvania cities including Philadelphia with Chicago and other Great Lakes Cities via Buffalo, New York. The Lehigh Valley was primarily first and foremost a coal road which transported high grade Anthracite to the big cities of the east and to steel mills along the Great Lakes and to the area in and around Chicago. The yard is a way point along the historic rail corridor that extends along the left bank Susquehanna River through the RBMN Duryea Yard and Mountain Top Yards down along the route of the historic Lehigh Canal and across the Delaware at Easton, Pennsylvania.

A company town is a place where practically all stores and housing are owned by the one company that is also the main employer. Company towns are often planned with a suite of amenities such as stores, churches, schools, markets and recreation facilities. They are usually bigger than a model village.

Sayre is the largest borough in Bradford County, Pennsylvania, 18 miles (29 km) southeast of Elmira, New York. In the past, various iron products were made there. In 1900, 5,243 people lived there; in 1910, 6,426 people lived there, and in 1940, 7,569 persons made their homes in Sayre. The population was 5,587 at the 2010 census.

Delaware is one of the 50 states of the United States, in the South-Atlantic or Southern region. It is bordered to the south and west by Maryland, north by Pennsylvania, and east by New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean. The state takes its name from Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, an English nobleman and Virginia's first colonial governor.

Late in 1871, the competing upstarts calling themselves the Lehigh Valley Railroad (LV) established themselves above and across the same pass in 1871 and extended that storied road to Sayre Yard astride the stateline between Waverly, New York and Sayre, Pennsylvania.

The Lehigh Valley Railroad was one of a number of railroads built in the northeastern United States primarily to haul anthracite coal. The railroad was authorized on April 21, 1846, for freight and transportation of passengers, goods, wares, merchandise and minerals in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the railroad was incorporated/established on September 20, 1847, as 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, named after the anthracite it transported. At the time, anthracite was transported by boat down the Lehigh River; the railroad was meant to be faster transportation. The railroad ended operations in 1976 and merged into Conrail along with several northeastern railroads that same year.

Historic Sayre Yard, named after the chief Engineer and first Superintendent of the Lehigh Valley Railroad (LV) was established across the stateline in 1876 in Waverly, New York and Sayre, Pennsylvania. The large yard, and the purpose built company town, Sayre, Pennsylvania were founded as part of a planned program of expansion and extension to the young railroad's infrastructure—the yard was but one benchmark on the way to completing the goal of establishing competitive passenger rail service between New York City, as well as cities in Delaware such as Wilmington, cities in central New Jersey such as Trenton, and Eastern Pennsylvania cities including Philadelphia with Chicago and other Great Lakes Cities via Buffalo, New York. The Lehigh Valley was primarily first and foremost a coal road which transported high grade Anthracite to the big cities of the east and to steel mills along the Great Lakes and to the area in and around Chicago. The yard is a way point along the historic rail corridor that extends along the left bank Susquehanna River through the RBMN Duryea Yard and Mountain Top Yards down along the route of the historic Lehigh Canal and across the Delaware at Easton, Pennsylvania.

Waverly is the largest village in Tioga County, New York, United States. It is located southeast of Elmira in the Southern Tier region. This village was incorporated as the southwest part of the town of Barton in 1854. The village name is attributed to Joseph "Uncle Joe" Hallett, founder of its first Fire Department and pillar of the community, who conceived the name by dropping the 2nd "e" from the name of his favorite author's novel, Waverley by Sir Walter Scott. The former village hall is listed on the National Historic Places list.

Until its dismantlement under Conrail the yard engine maintenance building had the largest structure in the United States devoted to the maintenance and construction of railroad locomotives. The yard was acquired by Reading Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad in 1996 during the dissolution of Conrail which had acquired the property in 1976 when the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad joined its properties to that ill-fated conglomerate enterprise.

Conrail 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, and while it no longer operates trains it continues to do business as an asset management and network services provider in three Shared Assets Areas that were excluded from the division of its operations during its acquisition by CSX Corporation and the Norfolk Southern Railway.

The Reading Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad, sometimes shortened to Reading and Northern Railroad, is a regional railroad operating in eastern Pennsylvania, with headquarters located in Port Clinton. The RBMN provides freight service on 300 miles (480 km) of track, with its mainline consisting of the Reading Division between Reading and Packerton and the Lehigh Division between Lehighton and Dupont. In addition to freight service, passenger excursions also run along the RBMN system. The Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway (LGSR) is a tourist railroad that operates passenger excursions along the RBMN between Jim Thorpe and Lehigh Gorge State Park. The RBMN also operates passenger excursions from Reading and Port Clinton to Jim Thorpe.

The Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad is a defunct railroad which operated in the state of Pennsylvania during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The company was a subsidiary of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company (LC&N), but for much of its lifetime leased by the Central Railroad of New Jersey. It was founded in 1837 to carry coal from the North Branch Division of the Pennsylvania Canal to the Lehigh Canal, but would later be extended to the Delaware River at Easton, Pennsylvania. It was conveyed to Conrail in 1976.

Geography

Mountain Top, Pennsylvania, is a railroad town once named Penobscot,^[1] built beside the yard to house its employees and those of the nearby mines. The town is located at 41°8′7″N75°54′16″W / 41.13528°N 75.90444°W / 41.13528; -75.90444 (41.1353022, -75.9044749) in the shadow of Mount Penobscot (or Penobscot Knob) and is located in the saddle-shaped mountain pass atop the ridgeline between the Susquehanna River basin to the north and west and the Lehigh River basin to the east and south, so sits astride an important land communications corridor bridging the two watersheds below. It is 8 miles (13 km) northwest of White Haven at the head end of the Lehigh River gorge and in the heights above Hazleton, Pennsylvania, 10 miles (16 km) south of Wilkes-Barre on Pennsylvania Route 309. Consequently, even though regional railroads are much diminished in scope and influence, Mountain Top yard, once used as a marshaling yard at the top of the Ashley Planes funicular (cable driven) railway, is still an important regional element of the transportation infrastructure connecting Allentown and Philadelphia with points north and west via trackage to several yards in New York State. Mountain Top's yard was the upper terminal end of the historic Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad's Ashley Planes funicular railways (first begun 1837) which lifted freight over the steep climb from the Ashley neighborhood in Wilkes-Barre and site of a large transfer yard bypassed by the former trackage of the Lehigh Valley Railroad and leased to the Central Railroad of New Jersey.

Col The lowest point on a mountain ridge between two peaks

In geomorphology, a col is the lowest point on a mountain ridge between two peaks. It may also be called a gap. Particularly rugged and forbidding cols in the terrain are usually referred to as notches. They are generally unsuitable as mountain passes, but are occasionally crossed by mule tracks or climbers' routes. The term col tends to be associated more with mountain rather than hill ranges.

A mountain pass is a navigable route through a mountain range or over a ridge. Since many of the world's mountain ranges have presented formidable barriers to travel, passes have played a key role in trade, war, and both human and animal migration throughout Earth's history. At lower elevations it may be called a hill pass. The highest vehicle-accessible pass in the world appears to be Mana Pass, located in the Himalayas on the border between India and Tibet, China.

A drainage divide, water divide, divide, ridgeline, watershed, water parting or height of land is elevated terrain that separates neighbouring drainage basins. On rugged land, the divide lies along topographical ridges, and may be in the form of a single range of hills or mountains, known as a dividing range. On flat terrain, especially where the ground is marshy, the divide may be harder to discern.

Mountain Top is elevated at 1,558 feet (475 m) above sea level.

Related Research Articles

The Coal Region is a historically important coal-mining area in Northeastern Pennsylvania in the central Ridge-and-valley Appalachian Mountains, comprising Lackawanna, Luzerne, Columbia, Carbon, Schuylkill, Northumberland, and the extreme northeast corner of Dauphin counties. Academics have made the distinction North Anthracite Coal Field and South Anthracite Coal Field, the lower region bearing the further classification Anthracite Uplands in physical geology. The Southern Coal Region can be further broken into the Southeastern and Southwestern Coal Regions, with the divide between the Little Schuylkill and easternmost tributary of the Schuylkill River with the additional divide line from the Lehigh watershed extended through Barnesville the determining basins.

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 Canadian Pacific Railway (CP). CP operates D&H under its subsidiary Soo Line Corporation which also operates Soo Line Railroad.

Schuylkill Canal is the common, but technically inaccurate, name for the Schuylkill Navigation, a 19th-century commercial waterway in and along the Schuylkill River in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. The "canal" was actually a system of interconnected canals and slack-water pools in the river, which is called a navigation. Chartered in 1815, the Schuylkill Navigation opened in 1825 to provide transportation and water power. At the time, the river was the least expensive and most efficient method of transporting bulk cargo, and the eastern seaboard cities of the U.S. were experiencing an energy crisis due to deforestation. It fostered the mining of anthracite coal as the major source of industry between Pottsville and eastern markets. Along the tow-paths, mules pulled barges of coal from Port Carbon through the water gaps to Pottsville; locally to the port and markets of Philadelphia; and some then by ship or through additional New Jersey waterways, to New York City markets.

The Belvidere Delaware Railroad was a railroad running along the eastern shore of the Delaware River from Trenton, New Jersey north via Phillipsburg, New Jersey to the small village of Manunka Chunk, New Jersey. It became an important feeder line for the Lehigh Valley Railroad's join to the Central Railroad of New Jersey, which was constructed into Phillipsburg, NJ at about the same time. This connected Philadelphia and Trenton, NJ at one end of the shortline railroad to the rapidly growing lower Wyoming Valley region, and via the Morris Canal or the CNJ, a slow or fast connection to New York City ferries crossing New York Harbor from Jersey City, NJ. In 1871 the CNJ leased various railroads in Pennsylvania, most from the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company allowing the CNJ to penetrate to the upper Wyoming Valley, over some stretches, competing directly with the Lehigh Valley Railroad and with the Lehigh Canal and the trunk road connection of the Belvidere Delaware Railroad to New York became less profitable since Philadelphia connected more easily to Northeastern Pennsylvania thereafter without needing a double-crossing of the Delaware River; a general revenue decline ensued, leading to the Pennsylvania Railroad acquiring the rights, where it served as part of the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) system, carrying mainly anthracite coal and iron ore from northeastern Pennsylvania to population centers along the coast.

The Lehigh Division is a major freight low grade rail line owned and operated by the Reading Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania that runs from Lehighton, Pennsylvania to Dupont, Pennsylvania, it originally ran from Lehighton to Mehoopany, Pennsylvania. The Lehigh Division was formed in 1993 by Conrail from the Lehigh Line, officially the former main line of the Lehigh Valley Railroad (LVRR) that has absorbed former Central Railroad of New Jersey (CNJ) main line trackage and former Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad (L&S) main line trackage into its system under Conrail; the Lehigh Line today is owned by the Norfolk Southern Railway and connects to the Lehigh Division at Lehighton.

Lehigh Gorge State Park is a 4,548 acres (1,841 ha) Pennsylvania state park in Luzerne and Carbon Counties, Pennsylvania in the United States. The park encompasses the Lehigh Gorge, which stretches along the Lehigh River from a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flood control dam in Luzerne County to Jim Thorpe in Carbon County. The primary recreational activity at Lehigh Gorge State Park is white water rafting.

The Lehigh Gorge Trail is a 26-mile (42 km) multi-use rail trail that winds along the valley of the Lehigh River Gorge from White Haven, to Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. Much of the trail runs through the Lehigh Gorge State Park, and was originally developed into a railroad corridor after an extension of the Lehigh Canal was first built under the great push of Main Line of Public Works to connect the Delaware Valley to Pittsburgh.

The Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company (LCAN) (1988–2010) was a modern-day anthracite coal mining company headquartered in Pottsville, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, U.S. which acquired many of the 'Old Company' (LC&N) properties and re-launched the Lehigh Coal Companies brand in 1988. The LCAN ran strip mining operations in the Panther Creek Valley east of Lansford along U.S. Route 209; with vast properties dominating the coal areas of Tamaqua, Coaldale, and Lansford. These properties are largely the same real estate assets as were acquired in the Panther Creek Valley by the predecessors: the haphazard Lehigh Coal Mine Company (1792-1822) and the builders of the Lehigh Canal and first American blast furnaces, the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, which spearheaded the U.S. Industrial revolution. The new company was incorporated in 1988 acquiring LC&N assets after bankruptcy proceedings, taking the name of the original.

Duryea Yard is a railroad yard in the Wyoming Valley region of Northeastern Pennsylvania currently operated by the Reading Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad. Originally constructed in 1870 by the Lehigh Valley Railroad as a turn-around and staging hub for coal transport from the "Coal Region" to Eastern big-city markets, the yard remains a hub for the energy extraction industry today.

Ashley Planes was a historic freight cable railroad situated along three separately powered inclined plane sections located between Ashley, Pennsylvania at the foot, and via the Solomon cutting the yard in Mountain Top over 1,000 feet (300 m) above and initially built between 1837-38 by Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company's subsidiary Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad (LH&S). One result of the 1837 updates of omnibus transportation bills called the Main Line of Public Works (1824), the legislation was undertaken with an eye to enhance and better connect eastern settlement's business interests with newer mid-western territories rapidly undergoing population explosions in the Pre-Civil War era. But those manufactories needed a source of heat, and the Northern Pennsylvania Coal Region was barely connected to eastern markets except by pack mule, or only through long and arduous routes down the Susquehanna then overland to Philadelphia.

The Nesquehoning Valley Railroad Company, herein called the Nesquehoning Valley Railroad (NVRR), is now a fallen flag standard-gauge, steam era shortline railroad built as a coal road to ship the Anthracite mined in the Southeastern Coal Region on either side of the Little Schuylkill River tributary Panther Creek and the history making coal towns of the Panther Creek Valley down the Lehigh River transportation corridor to the Eastern seaboard.

The Lehigh Line is a railroad line in central New Jersey and northeastern Pennsylvania. It is owned and operated by the Norfolk Southern Railway. The line runs west from the vicinity of the Port of New York and New Jersey (via Conrail's Lehigh Line to the Susquehanna River valley at the south end of the Wyoming Valley Coal Region. Administratively it is part of Norfolk Southern's Harrisburg Division and is also part of the Crescent Corridor. As of 2016 the line is freight-only, although there are perennial proposals to restore passenger service over all or part of the line.

Haystack Mountain (Pennsylvania), is an otherwise non-descript 1871 ft peak forming the steep southwestern faces of the Solomon Gap mountain pass's saddle connecting and dividing the Wyoming Valley from the Lehigh Valley.

The Hauto Tunnel, dug in 1871–72, was a 1.1-mile-long (1.8 km) 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 dam of the Hauto Reservoir impoundment about 1.3 miles (2.1 km) above Nesquehoning, Pennsylvania. The tunnel was significant for cutting nearly 15 difficult mountainous miles (24 km) off the trip to the Lehigh Canal terminal or, by rail, to other eastern coal companies, in the era when anthracite was the king of energy fuels.

References

↑ Penobscot, Pennsylvania

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[1] Penobscot, Pennsylvania

Mountain Top Yard

Contents

History

Geography

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References