Wilkes-Barre and Eastern Railroad
| Wilkes-Barre and Eastern Railroad | |
|---|---|
| legal form | Corporation |
| founding | 1892 |
| resolution | 194_ |
| Seat |
Dunmore , Pennsylvania ,
|
| Branch | Rail transport |
The Wilkes-Barre and Eastern Railroad (WB&E) was a railroad company in the northeast of the US state Pennsylvania . The company was founded in 1892 with the aim of giving its owner, the New York, Susquehanna and Western Railroad (NYS & W), access to the anthracite coal mining area around Scranton and Wilkes-Barre . This succeeded, but with the takeover of NYS & W and WB&E by the Erie Railroad , the national transports gradually migrated to the better-routed Erie railway lines. After bankruptcy, WB&E ceased operations in 1939.
history
In the 1880s, the New York, Susquehanna and Western Railroad (NYS & W) acquired mining rights for anthracite coal mining near Scranton, which were soon claimed by subsidiaries and licensees. NYS & W signed contracts with other mining companies in the Scranton and Wilkes-Barre region to transport coal to New Jersey . NYS & W built five short branch lines to connect the coal washers to the rail network . However, these routes were neither directly connected to each other nor to the NYS & W mainline, which ended a good 75 km east of Scranton, whereby the NYS & W was responsible for transporting coal to other railway companies, above all the Delaware and Hudson Railway (D&H) and the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad (DL&W), was instructed.
Therefore, on March 15, 1892, the Wilkes-Barre and Eastern Railroad (WB&E) was founded to close the gap between the NYS & W route sections. NYS & W acquired all of the shares in WB&E and concluded a profit transfer agreement with her on July 18, 1893. The 104.1 km (64.69 miles ) long railway line built by the WB&E until 1894 had its starting point in Kingston , northwest of Wilkes-Barre on the western side of the Susquehanna River . From there the route crossed the Susquehanna with a 365 meter long bridge and led first over Plains , Yatesville and Jenkins Township in a northeast direction, then in a southeast direction over the Pocono Mountains to Stroudsburg , where it reached the western end of the NYS & W main line. In Yatesville a link was created with the main line of the D&H, in Jenkins Junction with a route of the Lehigh Valley Railroad . A depot with workshops was built in Stroudsburg . The operation for the freight traffic took place on January 22, 1894, the continuous passenger traffic between Wilkes-Barre and the eastern NYS & W terminus Jersey City was started on June 4, 1894.
The main lines of the WB&E and NYS & W represent the shortest rail connection between the southern Wyoming Valley around Wilkes-Barre and the northeast of New Jersey. However, since the WB&E line was built at a time when the parallel lines of competing rail companies were already occupying the flattest routes had, it had numerous significant gradients between 15 ‰ and 17 ‰ and tight curve radii. While NYS & W still managed the freight transports it had acquired via WB&E, their national passenger transport was from the beginning much less attractive for passengers than the connections of the Central Railroad of New Jersey , DL&W and LV. As early as 1897, the WB&E and NYS & W gave up the management of through passenger trains; instead, local passenger traffic on the WB&E route was henceforth handled with mixed trains .
Since the WB & E route was not connected to the short NYS & W routes around Scranton, NYS & W founded another subsidiary, the Susquehanna Connecting Railroad (SC), to create the link. The SC constructed a route that branched off about 20 km northeast of Wilkes-Barre at a Paddy's Land , later Suscon Junction, called point in Pittston Township north of the WB&E route. At the same time, the SC leased the NYS & W branch lines around Scranton. With the opening of the first section on April 1, 1897, WB&E took over the management of the SC. The headquarters of both companies became Dunmore near Scranton.
Under significant mediation by JP Morgan , Erie Railroad took over control of NYS & W and its subsidiaries on February 1, 1898 by acquiring around 99% of the shares. Although the financially strong Erie Railroad invested in the NYS & W infrastructure and provided locomotives and wagons, it shifted the transports from the anthracite coal district of the Wyoming Valley eastwards from the WB&E to their own, significantly longer, but much flatter route. While the SC continued to play an important feeder role in coal transport, the WB&E had little passenger and freight traffic along its route. From 1926, the WB&E rented the approximately 5 km long section from Kingston to Plains including the bridge over the Susquehanna River to the Wilkes-Barre Connecting Railroad , while their own trains now ended in Plains. On May 15, 1935, it gave up passenger transport after only 400 passengers were carried in 1932 and only 94 passengers in 1934. In 1932, 138,473 tons of freight were transported, of which 42,287 tons were loaded or unloaded at WB&E stations. Most of the locally loaded cargo was natural ice from the Pocono Mountains; the bulk of the freight taken over by other railways (especially the SC) was coal. In 1934, the volume of goods rose to 141,986 tons, of which 34,025 tons were from / to WB&E stations. In 1936 the volume fell to 106,604 tons, of which 21,245 tons were local.
In 1937 NYS & W and WB&E filed for bankruptcy . WB&E had been losing money since the early 1930s, around $ 11,033 in 1932 and $ 30,014 in 1936. The operation was temporarily continued as part of a reorganization under insolvency administration, but the Erie Railroad (which had to file for bankruptcy itself in 1938) gradually withdrew from the two companies by 1940. The management of SC by WB&E ended on March 31, 1938. A year later, in 1939, WB&E ceased operations and shut down its railway line east of Suscon Junction, after the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) had already done so on September 23 1937 had granted the application for closure.
On November 1, 1938, the Erie Railroad took over freight traffic on the section between Plains and Suscon. A subsidiary of Erie, the Moosic Mountain and Carbondale Railroad Company , applied to the ICC on May 31, 1941 to acquire this section of the route. The application was granted on June 26, 1941. The section already leased to the Wilkes-Barre Connecting Railroad was sold to them in 1940. The WB&E was then dissolved in the 1940s.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c d e f Robert E. Mohowski: The New York, Susquehanna & Western Railroad . JHU Press, 2003, ISBN 978-0-8018-7222-8 , pp. 43-48 (English).
- ↑ a b c Interstate Commerce Commission (Ed.): Finance Docket 11791 Wilkes-Barre & Eastern Railroad Company Trustee Abandonment . January 17, 1939 (English).
- ↑ Interstate Commerce Commission (Ed.): Finance Docket 13230 Moosic Mountain and Carbondale Railroad Company et al, Purchase and Operation . June 26, 1941 (English).
- ^ The Historical Guide to North American Railroads . Kalmbach Media, 2014, ISBN 978-0-89024-970-3 , pp. 220 (English).