Twenty years after the formation of Conrail, the railroad sold its Allentown Cluster to R.J. Corman, the Nicholasville, Ky., company with nu- merous interests in the railroad busi- ness including the ownership and oper- ation of railroad lines. In July 1996 R.J. Corman returned red locomotives to Al- lentown by assuming operation of the cluster. The cluster included three seg- ments — the four mile remainder of the Lehighton Industrial Track (Conrail’s name for the former Lehigh Valley main line), the one mile long Allentown Industrial Lead (Conrail’s name for the remaining portion of the West End Branch) which extended to the site of the former piggyback yard, and the two mile Barber’s Quarry Branch (which had not seen a train operation in the last several years of Conrail owner- ship). R.J. Corman was now the proud owner of seven miles of railroad in Al- lentown. Over the years this has been reduced to five miles and remains Cor- man’s smallest operation. At start up, the Allentown Morning
Call newspaper was the line’s predom- inant shipper. Of the 566 carloads in 1996, 400 were boxcars of newsprint that had travelled from Canada. These carloads were unloaded and stored at the former piggyback facility. The oth- er start up customers were Tarkett which received clay, Harcross Chemi- cal which received liquid chlorine and
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TOP: Lehigh Valley C420 409 is eastbound with the Mercury on November 18, 1974, crossing Jordan Creek. The switch for the West End branch is at the second car. ABOVE: Ex-LV SW8 8682 operating as the East Penn Local brings piggyback cars toward Conrail’s Gordon Street Yard on November 24, 1984. The steel beams next to the engine are all that remain of the Lehigh Valley Railroad’s Allentown Station. SEPTA’s Allentown Station was located about five cars back. The train is running on the former West End Branch.
E. Schneider & Sons, which received scrap steel. Harcross Chemical was lo- cated in part of the former Lehigh Structural Steel plant located to the north of, under and south of the Tilgh-
man Street Bridge. Thus, R.J. Corman operated on two of the three lines; no service has been provided by Corman on the Barbers Quarry branch. The fact that R.J. Corman was able to handle
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