The Lehigh Valley Heritage Locomotive-A Legacy Remembered

The Lehigh Valley Heritage Locomotive-A Legacy Remembered
    By Andy Fletcher


    The Lehigh Valley was one of many Northeastern railroads that tapped into the region’s rich anthracite coal deposits.  From cities such as Allentown and Wilkes-Barre, Lehigh Valley was carried coal north and west towards the great lakes region at Buffalo and southeast to Newark.
    As competition from neighboring railroads grew, Lehigh Valley began to acquire the coal companies that provided its revenue.  Lehigh Valley also found itself as a trunk line with many feeders.  Costs could be cut through acquisitions.
    Lehigh Valley shipped many industrial goods from online cities such as Scranton, Allentown and Wilkes Barre to New York City and across the Great Lakes and by connecting railroad to Western markets at Buffalo.  Lehigh Valley soon found itself as a trunk line that connected the Northeast to the West.
      By the 1950’s, Lehigh Valley’s online anthracite mines began to mine less and less coal.  This took its toll on the company as an investor in the mines themselves and as a the railroad that depended shipping revenues.  Lehigh Valley began to find itself in financial troubles. Lehigh Valley’s brightly painted locomotives reflected pride in a railroad that found itself on hard times.
    Pennsylvania Railroad’s acquisition of 85% of Lehigh Valley would keep the Lehigh Valley afloat, however, only temporarily.  The Pennsylvania Railroad, found itself, in a changing Northeastern railroad scene.  Pennsylvania Railroad would soon find itself upon hard times, as well, in the ill fated Penn Central merger with New York Central.  After Penn Central’s bankruptcy, the imbalance in payments to Lehigh Valley proved to be fatal to the already struggling railroad.  Shortly after the Penn Central bankruptcy, Lehigh Valley, too, went bankrupt.
    As we entered the 1960’s, as well, the landscape of America was changing.  Trucking and the interstate highway system made times hard for the railroad.  The world moved faster.  The world was moving on.   
    Many railroad companies found themselves consolidating.  Railroads needed to be shortened.  Fat needed to be cut from the system for the rails to compete.  Railroads joined forces for their routes to flow more smoothly.
    In 1976, Conrail was formed as a government acquisition of several bankrupt railroads in the Northeast, including portions of the Lehigh Valley.  In 1999, Conrail became a part of Norfolk Southern, which was formed by the merger of The Southern Railway with Norfolk & Western in 1982. 
    This spring, in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Norfolk Southern painted a brand new locomotive in dress inspired by the Lehigh Valley.  This livery celebrates the thirtieth anniversary of Norfolk Southern’s creation.
    The locomotive painted exceeds today’s clean air emission standards.  It has the power of one and a half locomotives of its Lehigh Valley predecessors.  Yet, in its lines, one sees the Lehigh Valley.
    One retraces the locomotive’s footsteps across the Northeast where this locomotive’s advanced technology gains its footing.
    As you hear the lonesome whistle blow down the track in Pennsylvania, New Jersey or New York , keep an eye out for this beautifully painted locomotive.  Side by side it works with its regularly painted counterparts.  A tribute to the past, it rolls down the track, giving the Northeast a chance to see a peek at railroading’s past.  This locomotive reflects upon the way railroading once was.
    A time when iron rails not only connected us all, but connected our hearts and minds.  In a time where the next appointment dictates our day, this brightly painted locomotive takes us back to a simpler time, a time when the lull of the rocking chair kept the pace of the evening.
    It is not always that we are reminded of the past, of the shoulders that today stands on.  We do not always take the time to remember the people and institutions that came before.
    It is in the sleek lines of the Lehigh Valley Heritage locomotive that we see the legacy of the freight agents who punched waybills.  We see the coal miner at Allentown and the factory worker at Scranton. 
    We see the crews who maintained the right of way safely to Oak Island Yard in Newark, and passed the torch on to the generations of today’s railroaders.  We see a Northeast that grew strong with the Lehigh Valley.
    Most of all, we see a railroad that did not forget its roots.  Roots in communities, roots in its people, roots in the American landscape.  A railroad that is proud of where it came from and is proud of where it is going.