The Aliquippa and Ohio River Railroad is a six-mile

short line railroad :''Short Line is also one of the four railroads in the American version of the popular board game Monopoly, named after the Shore Fast Line, an interurban streetcar line.'' A shortline railroad is a small or mid-sized railroad company that opera ...

Aliquippa, Pennsylvania Aliquippa is the largest city in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, Beaver County, Pennsylvania, United States, located on the Ohio River about northwest of Pittsburgh. The population was 9,238 at the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census. It is part ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, controlled by Genesee & Wyoming Inc. through its ownership of the

Ohio Central Railroad System The Ohio Central Railroad System is a network of ten short line railroads operating in Ohio and western Pennsylvania. It is owned by Genesee & Wyoming Headquartered in Coshocton, Ohio, the system operates of track divided among 10 subsidiary r ...

. It lies between

CSX Transportation CSX Transportation , known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Class I freight railroad operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. The railroad operates approximately 21,000 route miles () of track. ...

's ex-

Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad The Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad (P&LE) , also known as the "Little Giant", was formed on May 11, 1875. Company headquarters were located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The line connected Pittsburgh in the east with Youngstown, Ohio in the H ...

line and the

Ohio River The Ohio River is a long river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing southwesterly from western Pennsylvania to its mouth on the Mississippi River at the southern tip of Illino ...

, extending south from CSX's

yard The yard (symbol: yd) is an English unit of length in both the British imperial and US customary systems of measurement equalling 3 feet or 36 inches. Since 1959 it has been by international agreement standardized as exactly 0.914 ...

in northern Aliquippa to near the Ambridge-Aliquippa Bridge. Formerly known as the Aliquippa and Southern Railroad , its owner and primary customer was

LTV Steel Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV) was a large American conglomerate which existed from 1961 to 2000. At its peak, it was involved in aerospace, airlines, electronics, steel manufacturing, sporting goods, meat packing, car rentals, and pharmaceuticals, am ...

, which mostly closed its Aliquippa plant in 1985 and sold the line to the Ohio Central in 2002. The AOR now connects the Aliquippa Industrial Park, which occupies the LTV site, with CSX.

History

The

Jones and Laughlin Steel Company The Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation began as the American Iron Company, founded in 1852 by Bernard Lauth and Benjamin Franklin Jones, a few miles (c 4 km) south of Pittsburgh along the Monongahela River. Lauth's interest was bought in ...

(J&L) incorporated the Aliquippa and Southern Railroad in November 1906 to serve its new plant at Aliquippa, downriver from its

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

location. The majority of the line was opened by the end of 1910, and in 1921 the

Interstate Commerce Commission The Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) was a regulatory agency in the United States created by the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. The agency's original purpose was to regulate railroads (and later trucking) to ensure fair rates, to eliminat ...

declared it to be a

common carrier A common carrier in common law countries (corresponding to a public carrier in some civil law systems,Encyclopædia Britannica CD 2000 "Civil-law public carrier" from "carriage of goods" usually called simply a ''carrier'') is a person or compan ...

. Although the vast majority of its service was to J&L, several other local businesses shipped over the line. LTV Steel acquired J&L in 1968, and in 1985 it shut down most of the Aliquippa plant. The bankrupt LTV sold the railroad to the

in late 2002, and the newly created Aliquippa and Ohio River Railroad began operations on November 15. The rail access has since attracted businesses such as Wolfpac Technologies to the Aliquippa Industrial Park, developed by the Beaver County Corporation for Economic Development on the old steel mill property. Major commodities shipped over the line include bricks, aggregates, and plastics. The company was acquired by Genesee & Wyoming in 2008 as part of its purchase of the Ohio Central Railroad System.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Aliquippa Ohio River Railroad Pennsylvania railroads Railway companies established in 2002 Genesee & Wyoming 2002 establishments in Pennsylvania Aliquippa, Pennsylvania