William Penn's Land of Milk and Honey Has More Railroads Than Any Other
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Pennsy lvania’s colorful commerce Former Conrail GP10s are common on ichael Hawbaker is a happy player in getting the rock to the asphalt-mix- Pennsylvania short lines such as Gettysburg William Penn’s land of milk and customer. As vice president ing plants closest to the work sites. & Northern (above), passing Gettysburg’s for materials and transporta- As part of the North Shore Railroad military park, and Nittany & Bald Eagle tion of Glenn O. Hawbaker Group, a six-carrier operating company (left), working a lime plant in Pleasant Gap. honey has more railroads than Inc., a family firm started by based in Northumberland, Nittany & Bald Gettysburg, Kenneth Lehman; Nittany, Mike Zollitsch Mhis grandfather more than 50 years ago, Haw- Eagle plays a significant role in Pennsylvania’s any other state. And Pennsylvania baker is a heavy user of the Nittany & Bald aggressive economic development program. Too many lines Eagle Railroad’s services. Hawbaker is in the In fact, it is one of 51 active short lines and To understand why Pennsylvania has so intends to keep it that way aggregates business and one of his niches is regionals operating within Pennsylvania, a many short lines, you must go back nearly providing hot-mix asphalt for Pennsylvania state that, interestingly, has more shortline 300 years, to when Philadelphia was a rapidly Department of Transportation road-paving railroads than any other state in the country growing city of some 15,000 souls, expanding by Roy Blanchard projects. The Nittany & Bald Eagle is a major — and therein hangs our tale. westward as its population increased. By the © 2008 Kalmbach Publishing Co. This material may not be reproduced in any form www.TrainsMag.com 31 without permission from the publisher. www.TrainsMag.com The Nittany is a former PRR line connect- ing the four-track Middle Division (home to short lines brand-name trains like the Broadway Limit- Pennsylvania ed) at Tyrone with the Harrisburg-Buffalo Salamanca route at Lock Haven. Corning Erie EEC Binghamton Though the Nittany’s line was included in WNYP Olean the Final System Plan, Penn Central decided Union CityCorry Bradford CNYK (and Conrail later concurred) that it did not Mehoopany BPRR Mt. Smethport WCOR Towanda Carbondale need this cutoff. Instead, it sent eastbound Jewett Wellsboro Honesdale Monroeton TMSS coal trains for Pennsylvania Power & Light’s Meadville Kane WNYP RBMN Strawberry Ridge generating plant over a Titusville Pittston Jct.Scranton WNYP BPRR Wilkes-Barre SBRR parallel route via Cresson, Clearfield, and Ke- OCTR Taylor Marienville o/s DL Rouseville St. Marys Lackawaxen ating. As a result, the line was taken out of Oil City service between Tyrone and Milesburg KKRR NewberryLVRR Yard LS Johnsonburg Keating Williamsport Avis DL (though at one time miles of surplus cars Brookville BPRR Beach Falls Creek Lock Haven (NS) Muncy Haven LS were stored on it), leaving the few remaining RJCP Dubois Driftwood RBMN industries near Milesburg to be served from The poetically named Towanda-Monroeton Shippers’ Lifeline switches a Monroeton feed NCIR (KRL) Linden Milton NSHR Punxsutawney Sabula New Castle Petrolia RJCP UCIR Lock Haven. About this time the SEDA-COG mill on May 6, 2001, with its lone SW1 painted in Lehigh Valley colors. Kenneth Lehman BPRR Milesburg Allenwood Northumberland Portland Philipsburg o/s BPRR NBER Jim Thorpe Joint Rail Authority took action to preserve YSRR Lehighton Butler Clearfield SVRR Mt. Carmel Jct. Palmerton Fallen Tamaqua CHR Easton the complete route. That mouthful of initials Darlington RJCP Winfield Northampton BDRV Freeport BPRR Timber Mifflinburg Kutztown Midland Sunbury NDCR LVRB is today’s shorthand for the Susquehanna KJR Tyrone RJCN Bethlehem PSWR AOR Glenshaw Homer Clymer JVRR Economic Development Association-Coun- Aliquippa PAM New City Lewistown Port Clinton Hamburg Allentown RBMN PRL AVRR Kensington Ebensburg PRL Quakertown cil of Governments (see page 36). In a series Pittsburgh Cresson EPRY Export CI o/s Hollidaysburg Pennsburg New Hope of transactions between 1983 and 1996 the TCKR Manheim Reading WE LVRJ EVRY Radebaugh Martinsburg PRL PRL NHRR SLRS, Joint Rail Authority restored the entire line POHC URR Steelton SH Stevens Pottstown MIDH TYBR between Tyrone and Lock Haven. The Nitta- AVRR Sproul Mt. Holly WE SWP Middletown PRL Bridgeport Washington Springs UMP ny & Bald Eagle ran its first train to Lock Ha- Johnstown Landisville LNVT PRL Connellsville PSCC SRC Coatesville PRL ven for Hawbaker in 1993. York Strasburg Morrisville WE GET BVRY Bristol SWP Culbertson With the line re-established, the Nittany (CSX) Gettysburg YRC Fairchance NewSTRT Freedom Conshohocken approached Conrail about rerouting Straw- MMID Stewartstown Hanover O/S EPRY EPRY Wilmington berry Ridge coal trains onto its tracks. The Cumberland © 2008 Kalmbach Publishing Co., TRAINS: Bill Metzger Sylmar Nittany offered a route that was 60 miles AOR Aliquippa & Ohio River LVRB Lehigh Valley Rail Mgt. Bethlehem SBRR Stourbridge shorter, had fewer grades, and could save a AVRR Allegheny Valley LVRJ Lehigh Valley Rail Mgt. Johnstown SH Steelton & Highspire Conrail crew-start. Conrail agreed, and in BDRV Belvidere & Delaware River LVRR Lycoming Valley SLRS SMS Rail Service BPRR Buffalo & Pittsburgh MIDH Middletown & Hummelstown STRT Stewartstown 1996, coal trains began moving that way un- At Newberry Yard in Williamsport, Lycoming Valley GP20s trade cars with a Norfolk South- BVRY Brandywine Valley MMID Maryland Midland SRC Strasburg der a trackage rights agreement that Norfolk ern freight in 2002; the yard now supports UGI Energy’s new natural gas plant. Mike Harting CHR Chestnut Ridge NBER Nittany & Bald Eagle SVRR Shamokin Valley CI Cambria & Indiana NCIR New Castle Industrial SWP Southwest Pennsylvania Southern continues to use to this day. NS CNYK Central New York NDCR N.D.C. Railroad Co. TCKR Turtle Creek now moves 2 million tons of PP&L coal a about 40 others fall into this group. Blue Mountain or North Shore. Companies CSX CSX Transportation NHRR New Hope & Ivyland TMSS Towanda-Monroeton Shippers’ Lifeline DL Delaware-Lackawanna NS Norfolk Southern TYBR Tyburn year over the Nittany. (Conrail later spun off Regardless of origin, Pennsylvania’s short- based in Boca Raton, Fla., or Denver had lit- EEC East Erie Commercial NSHR North Shore UCIR Union County Industrial its Clearfield trackage to R.J. Corman.) Thus, line universe contains three types of carriers. tle opportunity to make a play. EPRY East Penn OCTR Oil Creek & Titusville UMP Upper Merion & Plymouth EVRY Everett PAM Pittsburgh, Allegheny & McKees Rocks URR Union through its prescience 25 years ago, SEDA- There are the independent single-property This trend continues. Norfolk Southern GET Gettysburg & Northern POHC Pittsburgh & Ohio Central WCOR Wellsboro & Corning COG preserved a vital route for coal from the operators like the 9-mile Middletown & last year leased part of its Harrisburg-Buf- JVRR Juniata Valley PRL Penn Eastern WE Wheeling & Lake Erie KJR Kiski Junction PSWR Pennsylvania Southwestern WNYP Western New York & Pennsylvania Monongahela coal fields to supply PP&L, Hummelstown or the tiny Tyburn, a 5-mile falo line in Pennsylvania to the Western KKRR Knox & Kane PSCC Pennsylvania & Southern YRC York Railway keeping Pennsylvania coalmine operators switcher in Morrisville. Then come the lo- New York & Pennsylvania, a company NS KRL Kasgro (non-operating) RBMN Reading & Northern YSRR Youngstown & Southeastern LNVT Landisville Terminal & Transfer RJCN R.J. Corman Allentown Lines o/s Out of service and related industries alive and well. cally owned regional operators (such as Rich- already had a strong relationship with after LS Luzerne & Susquehanna RJCP R.J. Corman Pennsylvania Lines Trackage rights (owner in parens) ard Robey’s North Shore group), and finally, leasing it the ex-Erie main line west of Hor- What color is your short line? the true regional carriers like the Wheeling & nell, N.Y., to Meadville, Pa. Pennsylvania short lines — and we’re Lake Erie and Genesee & Wyoming. The largest non-Class I in Pennsylvania is early 1800s, railroads began to come into travel had cut deeply into its passenger ser- The key phrase was “main lines.” Beyond talking active freight haulers only, not tourist Among the major shortline holding com- the coal hauler Buffalo & Pittsburgh, cover- their own, and in 1831 Mathias Baldwin vice. Freight traffic was declining, too, as the that core network, the USRA had identified lines, private switching operations, or others panies only Genesee & Wyoming has a sig- ing some 279 route-miles and hauling 73,000 built his first locomotive plant there. combination of super-trucks, super high- nearly 10,000 miles of “light density lines,” that do not bill shippers for freight services nificant footprint. The reasons are several, carloads a year to, from, and within the state. The first railroad in Pennsylvania was the ways, declining coal use, and erratic rail ser- and determined that about two-thirds of — have essentially two types of origins. First but it appears to be chiefly the way the Final Part of the Genesee & Wyoming family, the 1827 Switchback Railroad in what is now vice started to take its toll. The 1968 Penn that mileage was not worthy of being part of there are the lines that started for reasons of System Plan, Conrail, and its successors dealt Buffalo & Pittsburgh is an agglomeration of a Jim Thorpe, and by the 1880s, railroads large Central merger only compounded the prob- ConRail and should either “be subsidized