Nesquehoning Valley Railroad


The Nesquehoning Valley Railroad Company, herein called the Nesquehoning Valley Railroad , 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.
to Hometown left to right on the Nesquehoning Valley on this map. The lower third shows the four towns atop the Southeastern Coal Region in the Panther Creek Valley the railroad was originally designed to connect. It also clearly delineates where the ridge lines are and the upper left corner shows the convoluted rail lines of several railroads which are desperately trying to change altitude and connect less desperate corridors. It is noteworthy and thought provoking to consider that LC&N did not slow or close operations of their Summit Hill & Mauch Chunk Railroad, until a year after CNJ proved out the Hauto Tunnel.
It was one of a variety of regional railroads which were subsidiaries of Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, wherein the LC&N company financed part of the joint venture with outside interests; and often later bought a majority share or merged the railway into its railroad operating subsidiary, Lehigh & Susquehanna Railroad (LH&S

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 where it joined the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad between Easton, PA-Mountain Top from whence it began to climb, struggling steadily upwards in a long climb beside Nesquehoning Creek with Nesquehoning Ridge to the south, and Broad Mountain to the north up past the streams' headwaters below the drainage divide at Hometown in the saddle of the pass. From there the road dropped down westerly into the valley of Little Schuylkill River where it took a convoluted path entering Tamaqua where it connected to the Panther Creek Railroad and the Philadelphia and Reading Railway at Tamaqua Junction.
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 coal breakers and coal yards in Lansford, Pennsylvania, and the rest of the Panther Creek Valley was completed in 1872, as a joint-effort of the CNJ, the new leasee of the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad subsidiary of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company.
The Nesquehoning Valley Railroad would in time connect the Lehigh Canal and CNJ's customers to the coal deposits around Mahanoy City, and those deposits in the Panther Creek to customers beyond in the lower Susquehanna Valley. With the strength of this connective flexibility, the roadbed of the NVRR is still in use today as an important standard E-W rail corridor, today operated by the Reading, Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad.