Reading Railroad HO Scale Models

The Reading Railroad traces its origins to the Philadelphia and Reading Rail Road, chartered on April 4, 1833, making it among the earliest railroads established in the United States. Its primary purpose from the outset was the movement of anthracite coal from the mining districts of northeastern Pennsylvania southward to Philadelphia, following the gentle grades of the Schuylkill River valley along a route of approximately 93 miles. The original line between Philadelphia and Reading opened in December 1839, and an extension northwestward to Mount Carbon followed in January 1842, connecting the railroad to the collieries around Pottsville and positioning it as a direct competitor to the Schuylkill Canal. The construction of Port Richmond, a massive coal terminal on the Delaware River north of Philadelphia, gave the company an outlet for shipping anthracite by sea, while the establishment of the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company in 1871 extended the railroad's reach into actual mine ownership, creating a vertically integrated operation that at its peak made the Reading one of the most valuable corporations in the world. Throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century, the railroad expanded aggressively through leases and acquisitions. It absorbed the Lebanon Valley Railroad in the 1850s, gaining a route westward from Reading to Harrisburg that put it in direct competition with the Pennsylvania Railroad. It extended its reach into New Jersey through control of the Delaware and Bound Brook Railroad in 1879 and the construction of the Port Reading Branch in 1892, providing access to the port facilities along the Arthur Kill opposite Staten Island. Under president Archibald McLeod, the railroad briefly controlled the Lehigh Valley Railroad, the Central Railroad of New Jersey, and even the Boston and Maine Railroad in the early 1890s in an ambitious attempt to transform itself into a trunk line reaching New England, but opposition from financier J. P. Morgan and other railroad interests forced the company to retreat from those ambitions. The Philadelphia and Reading Railway Company reorganized the enterprise in 1893, and the Reading Company, a holding company structure, assumed control in 1924. The Reading's prosperity was intimately tied to anthracite coal, a dependency that ultimately proved fatal to its long-term financial health. As demand for anthracite declined sharply after World War II, displaced first by oil and natural gas heating and later undercut by competition from trucking enabled by the Interstate Highway System after 1956, the railroad struggled to find a new economic foundation. Its passenger operations in the Philadelphia suburban market remained significant, serving communities along the Schuylkill valley, through the North Penn corridor, and into New Jersey, but these services generated little profit. The company entered bankruptcy in 1971, joining a wave of northeastern railroad failures that also claimed the Penn Central and several smaller carriers. The Reading's railroad operations were absorbed into Conrail on April 1, 1976, when that federally sponsored consolidation took over the freight and commuter rail functions of the bankrupt northeastern lines. The suburban passenger services the Reading had operated around Philadelphia were eventually transferred to the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, which continued running trains over the former Reading routes and ultimately linked them to former Pennsylvania Railroad commuter lines through the Center City Commuter Connection tunnel, opened in 1984. The corporate shell that survived the railroad's dissolution was renamed Reading International, which pivoted to entertainment and real estate holdings. The Reading Railroad is perhaps best remembered in popular culture as one of the properties on the classic Monopoly board game, a distinction that has kept its name familiar to generations of Americans long after the last train operating under its reporting mark RDG passed into history.