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Alphabet Route
The Alphabet Route was a coalition of railroads connecting the Midwest United States with the Northeast, as a freight alternate to the four major systems: the Pennsylvania Railroad, New York Central Railroad, Erie Railroad and Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The route was formed on February 11, 1931, with the completion of the P&WV to Connellsville, Pennsylvania, on the WMIt was an outgrowth of George J. Gould's attempts to create a transcontinental railroad and later proposals made to the Interstate Commerce Commission for a " Fifth System" to supplement the four major systems; the consolidations planned to form those systems were stopped by the Great Depression. Named for the many-lettered initials of the participating railroads, it used the following systems from west to east: *New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad (NYC&StL/NKP) from Chicago, Illinois, and East St. Louis, Illinois, to Bellevue, Ohio * Wheeling and Lake Erie Railway (W&LE) from Toledo, Ohio, via Bellevue to Pi ...
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Alphabet Route Map
An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllable, and logographic systems use characters to represent words, morphemes, or other semantic units. The first fully phonemic script, the Proto-Sinaitic script, later known as the Phoenician alphabet, is considered to be the first alphabet and is the ancestor of most modern alphabets, including Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and possibly Brahmic. It was created by Semitic-speaking workers and slaves in the Sinai Peninsula (as the Proto-Sinaitic script), by selecting a small number of hieroglyphs commonly seen in their Egyptian surroundings to describe the sounds, as opposed to the semantic values of the Canaanite languages. However, Peter T. Daniels distinguishes an abugida, a set of graphemes that represent consonantal base ...
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Bellevue, Ohio
Bellevue ( ) is a city in Erie, Huron, Seneca, and Sandusky counties in the U.S. state of Ohio, located 61 miles southwest of Cleveland and 45 miles southeast of Toledo. The population was 8,202 at the 2010 census. The National Arbor Day Foundation has designated Bellevue as a Tree City USA. The Sandusky County portion of Bellevue is part of the Fremont Micropolitan Statistical Area, while the Huron County portion is part of the Norwalk Micropolitan Statistical Area. The small portion of the city that extends into Erie county is part of the Sandusky Micropolitan Statistical Area. Bellevue was the home of Henry Morrison Flagler when he partnered up with John D. Rockefeller to start Standard Oil. Flagler later went on to build the Florida Overseas Railroad, to Key West, Florida. The property of his former Bellevue residence on Southwest Street is the current location of thMad River & NKP Railroad Museum The city derives its name from James H. Bell, a railroad official. ...
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Central Railroad Of New Jersey
The Central Railroad of New Jersey, also known as the Jersey Central or Jersey Central Lines , was a Class I railroad with origins in the 1830s. It was absorbed into Conrail in April 1976 along with several other prominent bankrupt railroads of the Northeastern United States. History The earliest railroad ancestor of the CNJ was the Elizabethtown & Somerville Railroad, incorporated in 1831 and opened from Elizabethport to Elizabeth, New Jersey in 1836. Horses gave way to steam in 1839, and the railroad was extended west, reaching Somerville at the beginning of 1842. The Somerville & Easton Railroad was incorporated in 1847 and began building westward. In 1849 it purchased the Elizabethtown & Somerville and adopted a new name: Central Railroad Company of New Jersey. The line reached Phillipsburg, on the east bank of the Delaware River, in 1852. It was extended east across Newark Bay to Jersey City in 1864, and it gradually acquired branches to Flemington, Newark, Perth Am ...
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Allentown, Pennsylvania
Allentown (Pennsylvania Dutch language, Pennsylvania Dutch: ''Allenschteddel'', ''Allenschtadt'', or ''Ellsdaun'') is a city in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. The city has a population of 125,845 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. It is the fastest-growing major city in Pennsylvania and the state's third largest city, behind Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. It is the largest city in both Lehigh County and the Lehigh Valley, which had a population of 861,899 and was the 68th most populous Metropolitan statistical area, metropolitan area in the U.S. as of 2020. Allentown was founded in 1762 and is the county seat of Lehigh County. Located on the Lehigh River, a tributary of the Delaware River, Allentown is the largest of three adjacent cities, along with Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Bethlehem and Easton, Pennsylvania, Easton, in Lehigh and Northampton County, Pennsylvania, Northampton counties that form the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylv ...
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Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since 1854, the city has been coextensive with Philadelphia County, the most populous county in Pennsylvania and the urban core of the Delaware Valley, the nation's seventh-largest and one of world's largest metropolitan regions, with 6.245 million residents . The city's population at the 2020 census was 1,603,797, and over 56 million people live within of Philadelphia. Philadelphia was founded in 1682 by William Penn, an English Quaker. The city served as capital of the Pennsylvania Colony during the British colonial era and went on to play a historic and vital role as the central meeting place for the nation's founding fathers whose plans and actions in Philadelphia ultimately inspired the American Revolution and the nation's inde ...
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Reading, Pennsylvania
Reading ( ; Pennsylvania Dutch: ''Reddin'') is a city in and the county seat of Berks County, Pennsylvania, United States. The city had a population of 95,112 as of the 2020 census and is the fourth-largest city in Pennsylvania after Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Allentown. Reading is located in the southeastern part of the state and is the principal city of the Greater Reading Area, which had 420,152 residents as of 2020. Reading is part of the Delaware Valley, also known as the Philadelphia metropolitan area, a region that also includes Philadelphia, Upper Darby Township, Pennsylvania, Camden, and other suburban Philadelphia cities and regions. With a 2020 population of 6,228,601, the Delaware Valley is the seventh largest metropolitan region in the nation. Reading's name was drawn from the now-defunct Reading Company, widely known as the Reading Railroad and since acquired by Conrail, that played a vital role in transporting anthracite coal from the Pennsylvania's ...
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Reading Company
The Reading Company ( ) was a Philadelphia-headquartered railroad that provided passenger and commercial rail transport in eastern Pennsylvania and neighboring states that operated from 1924 until its 1976 acquisition by Conrail. Commonly called the Reading Railroad, and logotyped as Reading Lines, the Reading Company was a railroad holding company for the majority of its existence and was a single railroad during its later years. It operated service as Reading Railway System and was a successor to the Philadelphia and Reading Railway Company, founded in 1833. Until the decline in anthracite loadings in the Coal Region after World War II, it was one of the most prosperous corporations in the United States. Competition with the modern trucking industry that used the interstate highway system for short-distance transportation of goods, also known as short hauls, compounded the company's problems, forcing it into bankruptcy in 1971. Its railroad operations were merged into Conrail i ...
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Shippensburg, Pennsylvania
Shippensburg is a borough in Cumberland and Franklin counties in the U.S. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Settled in 1730, Shippensburg lies in the Cumberland Valley, southwest of Harrisburg, and is part of the Harrisburg–Carlisle Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 5,492 at the 2010 census. Of this, 4,416 were in Cumberland County, and 1,076 were in Franklin County. Shippensburg was incorporated as a borough on January 21, 1819. In the past, there were furniture factories, engine and pump works, and other industrial works located within the town. Shippensburg is the home of the Beistle Company, the oldest manufacturer of decorations and party goods in the U.S. In May 2012, Volvo Construction Equipment began a $100 million expansion project to bring its American headquarters to Shippensburg. Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania, one of 14 universities of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, is located just north of the borough limits in Shippensb ...
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Baltimore, Maryland
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 30th most populous city in the United States with a population of 585,708 in 2020. Baltimore was designated an independent city by the Constitution of Maryland in 1851, and today is the most populous independent city in the United States. As of 2021, the population of the Baltimore metropolitan area was estimated to be 2,838,327, making it the 20th largest metropolitan area in the country. Baltimore is located about north northeast of Washington, D.C., making it a principal city in the Washington–Baltimore combined statistical area (CSA), the third-largest CSA in the nation, with a 2021 estimated population of 9,946,526. Prior to European colonization, the Baltimore region was used as hunting grounds by the Susquehannock Native Americans, who were primarily settled further northwest than where the city was later built. Colonis ...
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Hagerstown, Maryland
Hagerstown is a city in Washington County, Maryland, United States and the county seat of Washington County. The population of Hagerstown city proper at the 2020 census was 43,527, and the population of the Hagerstown metropolitan area (extending into West Virginia) was 269,140. Hagerstown ranks as Maryland's sixth-largest incorporated city and is the largest city in the Panhandle. Hagerstown has a distinct topography, formed by stone ridges running from northeast to southwest through the center of town. Geography accordingly bounds its neighborhoods. These ridges consist of upper Stonehenge limestone. Many of the older buildings were built from this stone, which is easily quarried and dressed onsite. It whitens in weathering and the edgewise conglomerate and wavy laminae become distinctly visible, giving a handsome and uniquely "Cumberland Valley" appearance. Several of Hagerstown's churches are constructed of Stonehenge limestone. Its value and beauty as building rock may ...
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Western Maryland Railway
The Western Maryland Railway was an American Class I railroad (1852–1983) which operated in Maryland, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. It was primarily a coal hauling and freight railroad, with a small passenger train operation. The WM became a property of the Chessie System holding company in 1973, although it continued independent operations until May 1975 after which time many of its lines were abandoned in favor of parallel Baltimore and Ohio Railroad lines. In 1983 it was fully merged into the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, which later was also merged with the former Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad into the Chessie System in 1987, which is now renamed as CSX Transportation. History Main line: Baltimore to Hagerstown The original main line began with the chartering of the Baltimore, Carroll and Frederick Railroad in 1852, with the intent of building a rail line from Baltimore west to Washington County, Maryland. The Maryland General Assembly changed the name of the c ...
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Pittsburgh And West Virginia Railway
The Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railway was a railroad in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Wheeling, West Virginia, areas. Originally built as the Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway, a Pittsburgh extension of George J. Gould's Wabash Railroad, the venture entered receivership in 1908 and the line was cut loose. An extension completed in 1931 connected it to the Western Maryland Railway at Connellsville, Pennsylvania, forming part of the Alphabet Route, a coalition of independent lines between the Northeastern United States and the Midwest. It was leased by the Norfolk and Western Railway in 1964 in conjunction with the N&W acquiring several other sections of the former Alphabet Route, but was leased to the new spinoff Wheeling and Lake Erie Railway in 1990, just months before the N&W was merged into the Norfolk Southern Railway. The original Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway built several massive engineering works, including the Wabash Terminal in downtown Pittsburgh, damage ...
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