R.J. Corman Railroad/Pennsylvania Lines is a railroad in the

R.J. Corman Railroad Group R. J. Corman Railroad Group, LLC is a privately owned railroad services and short line operating company headquartered in Nicholasville, KY, with field locations in 22 states. It was owned by Richard J. Corman, who established the company in ...

, operating a number of lines in central Pennsylvania. It primarily carries coal between

mine Mine, mines, miners or mining may refer to: Extraction or digging * Miner, a person engaged in mining or digging *Mining, extraction of mineral resources from the ground through a mine Grammar *Mine, a first-person English possessive pronoun ...

s and

Norfolk Southern Railway The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad in the United States formed in 1982 with the merger of Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway. With headquarters in Atlanta, the company operates 19,420 route miles (31 ...

connections at

Cresson ''Cresson'' is the French word for ''watercress''. It may refer to: ; Places * Battle of Cresson, a small battle fought on May 1, 1187, in what now is Israel, near Nazareth * Cresson, Pennsylvania, a United States borough * Cressona, Pennsylvania, ...

and Keating. The trackage was acquired from

Conrail Conrail , formally the Consolidated Rail Corporation, was the primary Class I railroad in the Northeastern United States between 1976 and 1999. The trade name Conrail is a portmanteau based on the company's legal name. It continues to do busin ...

in 1996, when the latter company sold its "Clearfield Cluster"; Norfolk Southern acquired nearby Conrail lines in 1999. This is the longest R.J. Corman owned line, at over 300 miles in length.

History

RJCP trackage includes lines formerly owned by the

Pennsylvania Railroad The Pennsylvania Railroad (reporting mark PRR), legal name The Pennsylvania Railroad Company also known as the "Pennsy", was an American Class I railroad that was established in 1846 and headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was named ...

(from the Cambria and Clearfield Railway), New York Central Railroad (through its

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 Rail ...

and Beech Creek Extension Railroad subsidiaries), and the jointly-controlled Cherry Tree and Dixonville Railroad.

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 ...

, 22 Val. Rep. 1
Valuation Docket No. 928, The Pennsylvania Railroad Company et al.
(1929)

, 27 Val. Rep. 1: Valuation Docket No. 1022, The New York Central Railroad Company and its Leased Lines (1929)

, 22 Val. Rep. 1
Valuation Docket No. 877, Cherry Tree and Dixonville Railroad Company
(1929) The company came under common control with the 1968 creation of the Penn Central Transportation Company, and passed to

in 1976, which decided to sell the lines, which it called the "Clearfield Cluster", in 1995. RJCP began operating them on January 2, 1996. The sale included the following lines, as well as a number of other branches: *

(on Conrail's Pittsburgh Line) to

Mahaffey Mahaffey is a surname of Scottish people, Scottish origin, and is an Anglicisation of the Gaelic name ''Mac Dhuibhshithe''. It is a sept of Clan Macfie in Scotland, but the clan originated in Ireland. There the name is found largely in County Doneg ...

(ex-PRR) *Cresson to Flinton (ex-PRR) *Mahaffey to

Cherry Tree A cherry is the fruit of many plants of the genus ''Prunus'', and is a fleshy drupe (stone fruit). Commercial cherries are obtained from cultivars of several species, such as the sweet ''Prunus avium'' and the sour ''Prunus cerasus''. The nam ...

(ex-NYC) *Cherry Tree to Dixonville (ex-CT&D) *Mahaffey to

Curwensville Curwensville is a borough in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, United States, north of Altoona on the West Branch Susquehanna River. Coal mining, tanning, and the manufacture of fire bricks were the industries at the turn of the 20th century. In 1 ...

(ex-NYC) * Clearfield to Keating (on Conrail's

Buffalo Line The Buffalo Line is a railroad line owned by the Norfolk Southern Railway in the U.S. states of New York and Pennsylvania. The line runs from Buffalo, New York southeast to Rockville, Pennsylvania near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania along a former Penns ...

) (ex-NYC) *Clearfield to Wallaceton (ex-NYC) *Wallaceton to

Osceola Mills Osceola Mills is a borough in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 1,045 at the 2020 census. Geography Osceola Mills is located along the southeastern border of Clearfield County at (40.852870, -78.270455). It is on ...

(ex-PRR): abandonment authorized in 2001 Between Curwensville and Clearfield, Conrail operated via trackage rights over the Clearfield and Mahoning Railway (C&M), subsidiary of the

Buffalo and Pittsburgh Railroad The Buffalo and Pittsburgh Railroad is a Class II railroad operating in New York and Pennsylvania. The BPRR is owned by Genesee & Wyoming. Its main line runs between Buffalo, New York and Eidenau, Pennsylvania, north of Pittsburgh. Here, conne ...

(B&P), which had acquired it from

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. ...

. B&P operations were terminated in 1992, when the line west of Curwensville was abandoned, and Conrail acquired control of the C&M in a late 1992-early 1993 swap, where the B&P acquired an isolated Conrail line for operation as Bradford Industrial Rail. Conrail sold the C&M to

Richard J. Corman Richard Jay Corman (July 22, 1955 – August 23, 2013) was the founder and owner of R. J. Corman Railroad Group, a Nicholasville, Kentucky-based railroad services and short line operating company. Early life Corman was born and died in Nicho ...

, owner of RJCP, effective January 26, 1996, and it remains a non-operating subsidiary.

Trail to Rails

In May 2012, the

Surface Transportation Board The Surface Transportation Board (STB) of the United States is a federal, bipartisan, independent adjudicatory board. The STB was established on January 1, 1996, to assume some of the regulatory functions that had been administered by the Intersta ...

granted the railroad permission to reclaim 20 miles of track in Clarence, Pennsylvania abandoned by

in 1990, 10 miles which had been converted into the Snow Shoe Rails to Trails. The decision was a major victory for both the company and the railroad industry in general, as there are few instances in the U.S. where an abandoned corridor-turned-

rail trail A rail trail is a shared-use path on railway right of way. Rail trails are typically constructed after a railway has been abandoned and the track has been removed, but may also share the right of way with active railways, light rail, or streetcar ...

has reverted to an active railroad.

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:R.J. Corman Railroad Pennsylvania Lines Pennsylvania railroads Railway companies established in 1996 Spin-offs of Conrail