The Oil Creek and Allegheny River Railway was an American railroad company that was located in western Pennsylvania.
Initially incorporated under a special act of Pennsylvania on April 17, 1861 as the Warren and Tidioute Railway, this railroad changed its name to the Warren and Franklin Railway on March 31, 1864, and then to the Oil Creek and Allegheny River Railway on February 26, 1868, [1] when it was consolidated with the Oil Creek Railroad, the Farmers Railroad, and the Oil City and Pithole Railroad. [2]
In 1869, John Pitcairn was appointed its General Manager. [3]
The company was sold at foreclosure on December 29, 1875, and was acquired on February 8, 1876 by the Pittsburgh, Titusville and Buffalo Railway, which eventually became part of the Western New York and Pennsylvania Railway and the Pennsylvania Railroad. [1]
During the period just prior to foreclosure, from 1874 to 1875, the company's president was John Scott and its treasurer was H. A. Phillips. [4]
The Allegheny River is a 325-mile-long (523 km) headwater stream of the Ohio River in western Pennsylvania and New York. The Allegheny River runs from its headwaters just below the middle of Pennsylvania's northern border northwesterly into New York then in a zigzag southwesterly across the border and through Western Pennsylvania to join the Monongahela River at the Forks of the Ohio at Point State Park in Downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Allegheny River is, by volume, the main headstream of both the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Historically, the Allegheny was considered to be the upper Ohio River by both Native Americans and European settlers.
Amasa Stone, Jr. was an American industrialist who is best remembered for having created a regional railroad empire centered in the U.S. state of Ohio from 1860 to 1883. He gained fame in New England in the 1840s for building hundreds of bridges, most of them Howe truss bridges. After moving into railroad construction in 1848, Stone moved to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1850. Within four years he was a director of the Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati Railroad and the Cleveland, Painesville and Ashtabula Railroad. The latter merged with the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway, of which Stone was appointed director. Stone was also a director or president of numerous railroads in Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Michigan.
The Dunkirk, Allegheny Valley and Pittsburgh Railroad is a historic railroad company that operated in Pennsylvania and New York.
The Peach Bottom Railway was a 19th-century 3 ft narrow gauge railroad in Pennsylvania, designed to haul coal from the Broad Top fields in central Pennsylvania to Philadelphia, but succeeded only in establishing two local short lines.
The Jersey Shore, Pine Creek and Buffalo Railway was a railroad built in the early 1880s to give the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad access to the coal regions around Clearfield, Pennsylvania, United States. It was originally planned as part of a connecting line between the East Coast of the United States and Buffalo, New York.
The New Castle Branch was a rail line owned and operated by the Pennsylvania Railroad in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. The line ran from New Castle north to Stoneboro, and is now entirely abandoned. At its south end, the line intersected the Erie and Pittsburgh Branch and Mahoningtown Branch. When the New Castle Branch ended at Stoneboro, the PRR had trackage rights east along the New York Central Railroad's Stoneboro Branch to Oil City and the Allegheny Branch, Chautauqua Branch, and Salamanca Branch.
Turtle Creek is a 21.1-mile-long (34.0 km) tributary of the Monongahela River in Allegheny and Westmoreland counties in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. At its juncture with the Monongahela is Braddock, Pennsylvania, where the Battle of the Monongahela was fought in 1755. In the mid-19th century, the Pennsylvania Railroad laid tracks along the stream as part of its Main Line from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh.
The Atlantic and Great Western Railroad began as three separate railroads: the Erie and New York City Railroad based in Jamestown, New York; the Meadville Railroad based in Meadville, Pennsylvania ; and the Franklin and Warren Railroad based in Franklin Mills, Ohio. The owners of the three railroads had been working closely together since an October 8, 1852, meeting in Cleveland to plan an expansion of the "Great Broad Route", the Erie Railroad, through their respective areas.
John Pitcairn Jr. was a Scottish-born American industrialist. With just an elementary school education, Pitcairn rose through the ranks of the Pennsylvania railroad industry, and played a significant role in the creation of the modern oil and natural gas industries. He went on to found the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company, an early industry innovator which quickly grew into the largest manufacturer of plate glass in the United States, and amassed one of the largest fortunes in the United States at the time.
Hugh Pitcairn served as the first United States consul general to Hamburg, German Empire, from 1903 to 1908. He was the brother of Pennsylvania railroad magnate Robert Pitcairn and industrialist John Pitcairn.
The Pittsburgh, Virginia and Charleston Railway was a predecessor of the Pennsylvania Railroad in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. By 1905, when it was merged into the Pennsylvania, it owned a main line along the left (west) side of the Monongahela River, to Pittsburgh's South Side from West Brownsville. Branches connected to the South-West Pennsylvania Railway in Uniontown via Redstone Creek and to numerous coal mines.
Natrona is an unincorporated community in Harrison Township, Allegheny County in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It is located in western Pennsylvania within the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area, approximately 24 miles (39 km) northeast of Downtown Pittsburgh. Natrona is situated along the Allegheny River at Lock and Dam Four, Pools Three and Four between Brackenridge, Natrona Heights, Karns, Allegheny Township, and Lower Burrell.
The Oil Creek Railroad Company (OCRR) was a railroad in western Pennsylvania.
The Frederick and Pennsylvania Line railroad ran from Frederick, Maryland to the Pennsylvania-Maryland State line, or Mason–Dixon line near Kingsdale, Pennsylvania consisting of 28 miles (45.1 km) of center-line track and 29.93 miles (48.17 km) of total track including sidings. Chartered in 1867, the railroad started construction in 1869 and cost $868,687.50.
The Wilmington and Northern Railroad is a railway company that once owned a line from Reading, Pennsylvania to Wilmington, Delaware. The original main line from Wilmington to Birdsboro, Pennsylvania was built between 1869 and 1871 by its predecessor, the Wilmington and Reading Railroad. An extension from Birdsboro to High's Junction was completed in 1874. There the Wilmington and Reading connected with the Berks County Railroad and ran over its tracks to Reading. The Berks County Railroad was foreclosed on at the end of 1874 and reorganized as the Reading and Lehigh Railroad, under the control of the Philadelphia and Reading Rail Road. The Wilmington and Reading also experienced financial difficulties and was itself foreclosed on in 1876. It was reorganized in 1877 as the Wilmington and Northern. After the reorganization, the railroad was closely affiliated with the Reading, but retained its own organization and officers until 1898. In that year, the Reading bought a majority of the company's stock and incorporated it into its own system. The main line from Birdsboro to Wilmington became the Wilmington and Northern Branch, while the extension above Birdsboro was incorporated into the Reading Belt Line. The Wilmington and Northern continued to exist as a paper railroad within the Reading system. The portion of the Wilmington and Northern north of Modena, Pennsylvania was sold to Conrail at its formation in 1976. The line south of Modena was retained by the Wilmington and Northern, which leased and then sold it piecemeal to other railroads between 1981 and 2005. As of 2021, the Wilmington and Northern still survived as a subsidiary of Reading International, Inc.
The Pithole Valley Railway was an ephemeral short line railroad in Venango County, Pennsylvania, constructed as a result of the Pennsylvania oil rush. The railroad was originally constructed in 1865 between Oil City, Pennsylvania, a local oil transportation hub, and the boomtown of Pithole, Pennsylvania. Constructed under the charter of the Clarion Land and Improvement Company, it was informally known as the Oil City and Pithole Branch Railroad. Although it was generally supported by the broad gauge Atlantic and Great Western Railway, it was built to standard gauge. Conflict with the Warren and Franklin Railway over the right-of-way along the Allegheny River led to a lawsuit which, in 1866, declared that the Oil City and Pithole had no right to operate along the river from Oleopolis, Pennsylvania to Oil City. That part of the line was sold to the Warren and Franklin, leaving the Oil City and Pithole with a 7-mile (10 km) line running north from Oleopolis to Pithole along Pithole Creek.
The Pennsylvania Petroleum Railroad was a railroad in Pennsylvania originally chartered in 1871, during the Pennsylvania oil rush. Intended to provide an additional outlet from the Pennsylvania oil fields to Erie, Pennsylvania, it graded about ten miles of line in 1872, but was then caught up in the collapse of the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad, which halted the project. The company was foreclosed and reorganized under new names many times, but accomplished relatively little. It laid a short segment of line in 1890 in Titusville, Pennsylvania which was leased to a subsidiary of the New York Central to be used as a siding to a tannery. Further construction took place in 1913 with the idea of opening it as an electric railway to Cambridge Springs, but this, too, was never completed.
The Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York Railroad was a paper railroad of the 1870s, vaguely projected to construct a new line between Baltimore and New York via Philadelphia. It did very little construction work, except for a few miles of grading from Relay House, on the Northern Central Railroad, through Towson, Maryland to the Gunpowder River. It merged with the bankrupt Wilmington and Reading Railroad in 1875, but failed to attract further investment to complete its own line. The two railroads were both reorganized separately after foreclosures. Most of the grade was sold to the Baltimore and Delta Railway.