The Bellefonte Central Railroad was a
shortline connecting
Bellefonte and
State College, Pennsylvania
State College is a home rule municipality in Centre County in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It is a college town, dominated economically, culturally and demographically by the presence of the University Park campus of the Pennsylvania Sta ...
. Constructed in the late 19th century to haul local
iron ore to furnaces in the Bellefonte region, it later hauled freight traffic to
Penn State and
lime
Lime commonly refers to:
* Lime (fruit), a green citrus fruit
* Lime (material), inorganic materials containing calcium, usually calcium oxide or calcium hydroxide
* Lime (color), a color between yellow and green
Lime may also refer to:
Botany ...
for steelmaking from local quarries. The line to State College was abandoned in 1974, and most of the remaining railroad in 1984, but a small portion is still used by the
Nittany and Bald Eagle Railroad
The Nittany and Bald Eagle Railroad is a short line railroad that operates of track in Blair, Centre, and Clinton counties in Pennsylvania in the United States. It is part of the North Shore Railroad System.
The line runs generally northea ...
.
History
Predecessors
The railroad was originally incorporated on September 21, 1882, as the Bellefonte and Buffalo Run Railroad. The purpose of this line was to connect Bellefonte with
Pennsylvania State College
The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvan ...
, and to tap the iron ore deposits along Buffalo Run. This would replace the inefficient wagons used to haul ore to the iron furnaces at Bellefonte. The local iron and agricultural interests who chartered the road contracted out construction to Frank McLaughlin, a Philadelphia businessman, in exchange for a majority of the stock; he turned construction over to his business associates, the Collins brothers. Experienced contractors, they were working at the time on the
Beech Creek Railroad
The Beech Creek Railroad is a defunct railroad which operated in central Pennsylvania between Jersey Shore and Mahaffey. Originally chartered in 1882, it was leased by the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad (later the New York Central Ra ...
,
and began grading the Bellefonte & Buffalo Run in March 1883.
However, the Bellefonte & Buffalo Run was graded to minimal standards of engineering, with little earthmoving and many curves.
In the meantime, McLaughlin and others chartered the Nittany Valley and Southern Railroad in January 1883. This line was proposed to run from Bellefonte to
Mill Hall, providing a connection with the Beech Creek Railroad. (The Bellefonte & Buffalo Run's only connection in Bellefonte was the
Pennsylvania Railroad.) However, capital was not forthcoming, and construction of the Bellefonte & Buffalo Run ended with the completion of the grading from Bellefonte to
Struble in June 1883. This grade followed Buffalo Run from Bellefonte to
Waddle, where a
horseshoe curve
A horseshoe curve is a class of climbing curve in a roadbed which reverses turn direction (inflection) twice on either side of a single tight curve that varies through an angle of about 180 degrees or more.
Such curves are more commonly found ...
carried it across and out of the valley and it climbed eastward to the summit at Alto. From there it descended to the iron ore pits at Struble.
The Bellefonte & Buffalo Run and Nittany Valley & Southern were merged on March 16, 1885, to form the Buffalo Run, Bellefonte and Bald Eagle Railroad, under the presidency of
James A. Beaver
James Addams Beaver (October 21, 1837 – January 31, 1914) was an American attorney, recruiter and field commander of Pennsylvania Infantry who was wounded four times during the American Civil War, and politician who served as the 20th governo ...
.
The new company began to lay rail on the grade in April 1886, and began shipping ore from Lambourn Bank (near Waddle) to the McCoy & Linn furnace in Bellefonte in January 1887. The Collins brothers also invested in local ore banks,
including those at Red Bank. This was reached by a branch from Mattern Junction, on the horseshoe curve near Waddle. To smelt the ore, they began building
Bellefonte Furnace near the new railroad's enginehouse in
Coleville, on the outskirts of Bellefonte. The furnace was put in blast on February 1, 1888, but the local supplies of ore proved insufficient to sustain it and it was shut down in February 1891.
Part of the Red Bank Branch would be abandoned in 1894.
The loss of traffic from Bellefonte Furnace hurt the railroad, which was sold at foreclosure on December 1, 1891. It was reorganized on May 9, 1892, as the Bellefonte Central Railroad.
Expansion
The new railroad was organized under the presidency of Robert Frazer, a precocious
civil engineer formerly employed by the
Lehigh Valley Coal Company
Lehigh may refer to:
Places United States
*Lehigh, Iowa
*Lehigh, Kansas
*Lehigh, Oklahoma
*Lehigh, Barbour County, West Virginia
*Lehigh, Wisconsin
*Lehigh Acres, Florida
*Lehigh Township (disambiguation)
* Lehigh Valley, a region in eastern Penn ...
. Frazer's first goal was to reduce dependence on ore traffic by extending the railroad from a wye at
Struble to
State College. The branch would carry passenger traffic, less-than-carload freight, and coal for the college power plant. Because of the railroad's slender financial reserves, the Oreland Branch was removed and its rails used for the State College extension. The first train ran over the new branch on April 2, 1892.
The original station was located at College Avenue and Frazier Street and built in the
Queen Anne style.
[Sanborn Fire Insurance map of State College (1929)] The building of the extension also increased passenger service, with three trips per day (except Sunday) each way from
Bellefonte to State College, and two per day each way from
Waddle to Red Bank. The Bellefonte Central also promoted passenger traffic by building an
amusement park on the former Benjamin Hunter farm, which it called Hunter's Park, and by investing in the University Inn, which provided hotel accommodations for visitors to Penn State and had its own stop on the railroad. However, the railroad discontinued passenger service on the Red Bank Branch in 1894. Many of the miners had left the area when ore banks shut down after
Bellefonte Furnace went out of blast, and few riders remained for the Waddle–Red Bank trains.
Since the shutdown of
Bellefonte Furnace, President Frazer had been trying to reach a rate agreement with John Reilly of the furnace company. They came to terms in July 1892, and Reilly began making arrangements to restart ore mining and put the furnace back in blast. It resumed ironmaking in March 1893, and the Bellefonte Central acquired additional ore cars to serve the traffic. At the end of April, Tom Shoemaker resigned as superintendent to tend to his expanding duties supervising Bellefonte Furnace and ore mining at
Graysdale. He was replaced by Francis H. Thomas, a long-time
Reading
Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of letters, symbols, etc., especially by sight or touch.
For educators and researchers, reading is a multifaceted process involving such areas as word recognition, orthography (spelling ...
employee. Unfortunately, the new furnace traffic would prove ephemeral. The
Panic of 1893 forced Bellefonte Furnace to shut down again in July, after only four months of operation. While the railroad was still shipping ore to the McCoy and Linn Iron Works, Shoemaker could find few other customers for Graysdale ore and its importance to the railroad again declined.
Despite the poor economic times, the railroad's management remained confident. On May 10, 1894, the directors approved the extension of the main line from Struble to
Pine Grove Mills. Such an extension had been contemplated as long ago as 1884, during the BRB&BE era. While Pine Grove Mills would originate some traffic through farming and logging, the extension was primarily contemplated as part of a larger route. By extending south from Pine Grove Mills to
Huntingdon
Huntingdon is a market town in the Huntingdonshire district in Cambridgeshire, England. The town was given its town charter by King John in 1205. It was the county town of the historic county of Huntingdonshire. Oliver Cromwell was born there ...
, the line could connect with the
Huntingdon and Broad Top Mountain Railroad, an independent railroad serving the Broad Top coal region. By linking to the
Central Railroad of Pennsylvania at Bellefonte (built in 1893 over the contemplated Nittany Valley & Southern route), the Bellefonte Central could form part of a coal route tapping the Broad Top field on behalf of the
New York Central. However, the route faced a formidable obstacle in the crossing of
Tussey Mountain
Tussey Mountain is a stratigraphic ridge in central Pennsylvania, United States, trending east of the Bald Eagle, Brush, Dunning and Evitts Mountain ridges. Its southern foot just crosses the Mason–Dixon line near Flintstone, Maryland, run ...
. Such a line would require
switchbacks or a long summit tunnel. The
Pennsylvania Railroad already occupied the only usable gap at
Spruce Creek and would not look favorably on its new competitor for the Broad Top traffic. However, the economy remained slow, and the railroad found it difficult to obtain land at favorable prices. After a little grading, the project stalled until 1896, when the railroad lifted the rail from the derelict Red Bank Branch west of Graysdale and used it to lay track on the extension.
Service on the extension opened to
Bloomsdorf in September 1896 and to Pine Grove Mills in December.
[Bezilla & Rudnicki, pp. 54–55] Despite a $75,000 subscription offered by the town of Stone Valley (now submerged under Lake Perez) to complete the extension to Huntingdon,
the expense of further extension would clearly have outstripped the railroad's finances. The Bellefonte Central undertook no further construction towards Huntingdon.
Despite the loss of ore traffic, the Bellefonte Central had managed to keep its financial house in good order during the 1890s.
Penn State University had begun to represent an important source of freight and passenger traffic, although the railroad frequently clashed with the school over unpaid bills. In 1896, Professor John Price Jackson obtained permission from the railroad to run
trolley wire over its tracks from State College to Struble. An old
Philadelphia Traction Company trolley was operated by electrical engineering students over the line until 1905.
Ore traffic did see a resurgence, as the re-opened Bellefonte Furnace went from sporadic operation during the 1890s to a more sustained level in 1899 and 1900. To supply additional iron ore, the owners of the furnace bought the ore pits around
Scotia
Scotia is a Latin placename derived from ''Scoti'', a Latin name for the Gaels, first attested in the late 3rd century.Duffy, Seán. ''Medieval Ireland: An Encyclopedia''. Routledge, 2005. p.698 The Romans referred to Ireland as "Scotia" around ...
from the
Carnegie interests, who were switching to
Mesabi Range
The Mesabi Iron Range is a mining district in northeastern Minnesota following an elongate trend containing large deposits of iron ore. It is the largest of four major iron ranges in the region collectively known as the Iron Range of Minnesota ...
ore. The Bellefonte Central relaid almost a mile of the abandoned Red Bank Branch from Graysdale to the mines of Mattern Bank and built a new line from
Graysdale to Scotia to reach the Scotia mines, previously served by the Fairbrook Branch of the PRR. However, the railroad lost some of the furnace traffic in 1899 to the Central RR of PA. This railroad was owned by the same interests as Bellefonte Furnace, and in that year, it built a long trestle over the PRR to reach the furnace directly and connect with the Bellefonte Central. The furnace first switched its source of lime to a quarry along the Central RR of PA, instead of the Bellefonte Central, and in 1903, a new interchange between the Central RR of PA and the PRR allowed the furnace to shift inbound
coke and outbound iron traffic to the Central as well. Furthermore, the Mesabi ores were beginning to replace local ore, even in Bellefonte.
Search for new traffic
Bellefonte Furnace closed on December 21, 1910, and
Nittany Furnace in 1911. Their last contribution to the railroad's prosperity was the huge heaps of slag accumulated at the furnace sites: this was shipped over the Bellefonte Central to the PRR for use in construction projects. While the loss of furnace traffic would ultimately prove fatal to the Central RR of PA, the Bellefonte Central had found new sources of revenue. The McNitt-Huyett Lumber Company opened a mill at Waddle in 1909 and built an extensive network of 36 inch (91.44 cm) gauge track into the Scotia area, dual-gauging the Scotia branch and making use of the abandoned rights-of-way from the area's iron-mining heyday. The local timber was soon exhausted, and the branches to Mattern Bank and Scotia were abandoned in 1915. However, McNitt-Huyett built further extensions, and continued to haul logs to the Waddle mill until about 1919.
Furthermore, high calcium limestone deposits in
Bald Eagle Mountain
Bald Eagle Mountain – once known locally as Muncy Mountain – is a stratigraphic ridge in the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians of central Pennsylvania, United States, running east of the Allegheny Front and northwest of Mount Nittany. It lies al ...
, on the north side of the Buffalo Run valley, were now being exploited, much of their production going to steel mills in
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...
. These quarries, eventually consolidated under the management of the
Chemical Lime Company, would replace the iron furnaces as the principal generators of traffic on the Bellefonte Central.
With dreams of expansion towards Huntingdon long gone, the branch to Pine Grove Mills was removed in 1919.
However, a new opportunity to lengthen the railroad would arrive. In 1927, the PRR applied to abandon its little-used Fairbrook Branch. The Bellefonte Central, with the blessing of the
Interstate Commerce Commission, bought the line from
Fairbrook to
Stover, and obtained trackage rights from Stover into
Tyrone. A new line was built from Struble to Fairbrook (more direct than the roundabout and now abandoned route via Scotia), and service to Tyrone began in 1930. The object of the purchase was to send freight directly to the PRR main line at Tyrone, bypassing the circuitous route via Bellefonte. Furthermore, Professor Ernest L. Nixon (uncle of
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
) owned a large potato farm near Fairbrook and planned to turn the area into a major potato-growing region. Other traffic would include lumber, clay, and furnace slag. However, the resentful PRR refused to supply cars at Tyrone, and gave the same rate for interchange at Tyrone as at Bellefonte. With no rate differential to offset the costs of the longer run to Tyrone, it was uneconomical for the Bellefonte Central to interchange there.
The stockholders brought in new management in the wake of this debacle, in 1933, and operations were suspended on the branch.
However, passenger operations continued on the segment from Bellefonte to
Lemont (adjacent to State College).
Depression, World War II and decline
Litigation over interchange at Tyrone continued until 1938, ending with a decision unfavorable to the Bellefonte Central. The railroad promptly filed to abandon the line from State College to Stover, but approval was not granted until May 1941. The rails were removed by that November.
Frustrated in its expansion attempt, the Bellefonte Central was sustained throughout the
Great Depression by the shipment of construction material to State College.
Penn State extensively expanded its campus in the late 1920s and 1930s, in part to keep up with increased enrollment during the Depression, and many supplies traveled over the railroad. A new station was built on North Atherton Street in State College in 1930, and the line was cut back to the power plant. (The Hammond Building now occupies the old
right-of-way
Right of way is the legal right, established by grant from a landowner or long usage (i.e. by prescription), to pass along a specific route through property belonging to another.
A similar ''right of access'' also exists on land held by a gov ...
to the original station.) Shipments from the lime quarries fell as the steel industry collapsed, and Chemical Lime went into bankruptcy in 1935. However, the company continued operating during the bankruptcy, and was prompted to modernize its operations, building a new rail-served lime plant at "Chemical" and abandoning quarrying for deep-shaft mining. While it was bought out by
National Gypsum Company at the end of 1940, the modernization (paid for by a
Reconstruction Finance Corporation loan) would keep the lime operation competitive for decades, and make it the largest shipper on the Bellefonte Central.
The outbreak of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
and the ensuing industrial demand further increased lime traffic. The war also brought about a brief resurgence in the Bellefonte Central's original source of revenue, iron ore. The Scotia Mining Company was formed at the beginning of the war to resume mining in Scotia, and built a new ore washer in 1942. The ore was initially trucked to Waddle for shipment, but after it was determined to be insufficiently pure, the company obtained Reconstruction Finance Corp. money for further improvements. A new 3 mile (4.8 km) spur was built from the main line at Lagarde (Alto) to a new
beneficiation
In the mining industry or extractive metallurgy, beneficiation is any process that improves (benefits) the economic value of the ore by removing the gangue minerals, which results in a higher grade product ( ore concentrate) and a waste stream (ta ...
plant at Scotia. However, only 35 carloads of ore were shipped before the
Surrender of Japan, and the resulting fall in iron ore prices made mining uneconomical once again.
While regular passenger service ended in 1946,
post-war traffic remained strong, again largely on the basis of Penn State construction. The Bellefonte Central also carried construction materials for the building of local homes, as enrollment at Penn State increased under the
GI Bill. Although the advent of trucking was steadily eating into the
less-than-carload freight business, the railroad still handled bulk deliveries of food to Penn State and shipments of machinery, automobiles, and paper. While the delivery of
coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen.
Coal is formed when ...
to local homes ended in 1947, the railroad continued to haul about 470 cars per year of coal to supply the Penn State power plant. In 1953, the Bellefonte Central bought an
EMD SW9
The EMD SW9 is a model of diesel switcher locomotives built by General Motors Electro-Motive Division between November 1950 and December 1953. Additional SW9s were built by General Motors Diesel in Ontario Canada from December 1950 to March 19 ...
, its first
diesel locomotive, and retired its
steam locomotive in 1956, after buying an
EMD SW1200
An EMD SW1200 is a 4 axle diesel switcher locomotive built by General Motors Electro-Motive Division between January 1954 and May 1966. Power is provided by an EMD 567C 12-cylinder engine which generates . Additional SW1200 production was comp ...
.
However, the best years of the railroad were now behind it: it recorded its highest operating income in 1955.
In 1959, Penn State switched to trucks for coal shipments to its power plant, and scheduled service to State College ended. The collapse in traffic further accelerated in the 1960s, with the general decline of the Northeastern railroads. As the
Pennsylvania Railroad (
Penn Central
The Penn Central Transportation Company, commonly abbreviated to Penn Central, was an American class I railroad that operated from 1968 to 1976. Penn Central combined three traditional corporate rivals (the Pennsylvania, New York Central and the ...
after 1968) deteriorated, rail shipments suffered increasingly long delays, for which the Bellefonte Central could not compensate.
The era also saw the last passenger service over the railroad, a PRR special from
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...
for the
University of Pittsburgh
The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the univers ...
–Penn State
football game in 1964.
After years of attempting to generate new traffic in State College, the Bellefonte Central finally gave up on the southern end of its line in 1974. The last train left State College on July 22, 1974, and 13 miles (21 km) of rail were pulled up from State College to Chemical in 1976. From now on, National Gypsum would be the railroad's only customer.
Last years and abandonment
New management came to both the lime plant and the railroad in 1976. The plant was bought by Domtar, while the Bellefonte Central was sold to
Kyle Railways. Prospects still appeared reasonable for the railroad, as the plant at Chemical (bought by Domtar in 1976) had an extensive customer base. Most of the lime produced there went to steel mills in Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio. Ground lime was also shipped to glass manufacturers, and to chemical and paper companies. However, the Pennsylvania steel industry soon began to falter under the pressure of foreign competition and its own inefficiencies. As the steel industry fell, the lime market also collapsed, and Domtar shut down the plant at Chemical on July 1, 1982. The Bellefonte Central shut down the same day. The Chemical plant was sold in April 1983 to Confer Trucking, a local firm, which operated it at reduced capacity and had no need for rail service. Accordingly, the Bellefonte Central filed for abandonment in 1984. The 4.1 miles (6.6 km) from Chemical to
Coleville were removed in spring 1985. However, the last mile of track from Bellefonte to Coleville was bought by the SEDA-COG Joint Rail Authority, in order to make use of the enginehouse at Coleville. This track is now part of the
Nittany and Bald Eagle Railroad
The Nittany and Bald Eagle Railroad is a short line railroad that operates of track in Blair, Centre, and Clinton counties in Pennsylvania in the United States. It is part of the North Shore Railroad System.
The line runs generally northea ...
, and the old Bellefonte Central enginehouse is now used for their locomotives.
About a mile of the
right-of-way
Right of way is the legal right, established by grant from a landowner or long usage (i.e. by prescription), to pass along a specific route through property belonging to another.
A similar ''right of access'' also exists on land held by a gov ...
on the grounds of
The Arboretum at Penn State has been converted to a
rail trail, which was opened on May 22, 2006.
Stations
Main Line
Red Bank and Scotia Branches
Pine Grove Mills Branch
Fairbrook Branch
Scotia Branch (wartime)
Further reading
*
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bellefonte Central Railroad
Defunct Pennsylvania railroads
Transportation in Centre County, Pennsylvania
Nittany Valley
Railway companies established in 1892
Railway companies disestablished in 1984