page_title: Lehigh Line (Norfolk Southern)
section_title: 1870s
hierarchical_section_title: Lehigh Line (Norfolk Southern) / History / Lehigh Valley Railroad / 1870s
context_page_description: 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.
  The Lehigh Line hosts approximately twenty-five trains per day. The line runs from Port Reading Junction in Manville, New Jersey to Penn Haven Junction in Lehigh Township, Carbon County, Pennsylvania. At Port Reading Junction it meets the Trenton Subdivision. It crosses the Delaware River at Phillipsburg, New Jersey. Most of the traffic along the line consists of intermodal and general merchandise trains going to yards such as Oak Island Yard in Newark and Croxton Yard in Jersey City.
context_section_description: The 1870s witnessed commencement of extension of the LV in a new direction. In the 1870s the railroad acquired other large tracts of land starting at 13,000 acres (53 km²) in 1870, with an additional of 5,800 acres (23 km²) in 1872, and turned its eye toward rail expansion across New Jersey all the way to the New York City area.
  In 1870, the Lehigh Valley Railroad acquired trackage rights to Auburn, New York on the Southern Central Railroad.
  In 1872 the Lehigh Valley Railroad purchased the dormant charter of the Perth Amboy and Bound Brook Railroad which had access to the Perth Amboy, New Jersey harbor, and added to it a new charter, the Bound Brook and Easton Railroad. The State of New Jersey passed legislation that allowed the LV to consolidate its New Jersey railroads into one company; the Perth Amboy and Bound Brook and the Bound Brook and Easton were merged to form a new railroad company called the Easton and Amboy Railroad (or Easton & Amboy Railroad Company).
  The Easton and Amboy Railroad was a railroad built across central New Jersey by the Lehigh Valley Railroad to run across Western New Jersey from Phillipsburg, New Jersey to Bound Brook, New Jersey and it was built to connect the Lehigh Valley  Railroad coal hauling operations in Pennsylvania and the Port of New York and New Jersey to serve consumer markets in New York metropolitan area, eliminating the Phillipsburg connection with the CNJ that had previously been the only outlet to the New York tidewater. Until it was built, the terminus of the LV had been at Phillipsburg, New Jersey on the Delaware River opposite Easton, Pennsylvania. The Easton and Amboy was used as a connection to the New York metropolitan area, with a terminus in Jersey City, New Jersey.
  Construction commenced in 1872 as soon the Easton and Amboy was formed; coal docks at Perth Amboy were soon constructed, and most of the line's new expanded New Jersey route from Easton to Perth Amboy was graded and rails laid. However, the route required building a wooden bridge over the Delaware River to connect Easton with Phillipsburg, New Jersey and build a 4,893-foot (1,491 m) tunnel through/under Musconetcong Mountain near Pattenburg, New Jersey (about twelve miles east of Phillipsburg), and that proved troublesome. The tunnel delayed the opening of the Easton and Amboy part of the line until May 1875 (the line was completed in 1875), when a coal train first passed over the line. To support the expected increase in traffic, the wooden bridge over the Delaware River at Easton was also replaced by a double-tracked, 1,191-foot (363 m) iron bridge.
  At Perth Amboy, a tidewater terminal was built on the Arthur Kill comprising a large coal dock used to transport coal into New York City.These tracks were laid and the Easton and Amboy Railroad was opened for business on June 28, 1875 with hauling coal. The Easton and Amboy's operations were labeled the "New Jersey Division" of the Lehigh Valley Railroad. The Easton and Amboy had already completed large docks and facilities for shipping coal at Perth Amboy upon an extensive tract of land fronting the Arthur Kill. Approximately 350,000 tons of anthracite moved to Perth Amboy during that year for transshipment by water. Operations continued until the LV's bankruptcy in 1976. The marshalling yard is now the residential area known as Harbortown.
  Passenger traffic on the LV's Easton and Amboy connected with the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) at Metuchen, New Jersey and continued to the PRR'S Exchange Place terminus in Jersey City (that connection was discontinued in 1891 after the LV established its own route to Jersey City from South Plainfield).
  Eventually, the Easton and Amboy Railroad was absorbed into the parent Lehigh Valley Railroad.
  The route which was constructed by the LV's Easton and Amboy still exists but the rail line now stops at Manville, New Jersey and pass Manville, the route continues as a new rail line. The route from Manville to Perth Amboy (now Manville to Newark, New Jersey) was separated into a new rail line in 1999; the route from Manville to
caption: Easton and Amboy Railroad map