RE: (rshsdepot) The Allentown & Auburn Railroad: story of a dream unfulfilled

["Geoff Brown" <geoff_@_betweenthelakes.com>]

Bridge abutments seem indeed to be the most enduring relic of a
departed railroad.  When I tried to find artifacts of the O&W in
Liberty, NY last summer for a CD-ROM about the history of that town,
the most tangible evidence that there ever had been a railroad in
Liberty (and the O&W passed in the 1950s) were some bridge
abutments -- actually, a substantial culvert in this case.
Interestingly, as the pictures show, even this culvert may not be
there forever.  There is significant lime leaching and cracks are
developing.  (Another piece of tangible evidence was a street sign
for "Railroad Avenue".  In a few more years a newcomer might be
justified in asking why they gave such a name to a street.)

Geoff Brown
www.betweenthelakes.com


- -----Original Message-----
From: rshsdepot-owner_@_lists.railfan.net
[mailto:rshsdepot-owner_@_lists.railfan.net]On Behalf Of Bernie
Wagenblast
Sent: Monday, June 17, 2002 4:45 PM
To: Rail Depot List
Subject: (rshsdepot) The Allentown & Auburn Railroad: story of a
dream
unfulfilled


The Allentown & Auburn Railroad: story of a dream unfulfilled
Limekiln in Lehigh Parkway is all that's left of the proposed line.

By Frank Whelan
Of The Morning Call

June 17, 2002


Were it in Europe, the big stone structure in Allentown's Lehigh
Parkway
might be mistaken for the remains of a castle or some other ancient
fortification.

But the reality is less romantic, if not less interesting. The square
stone
pile with three openings at its base is a limekiln: a furnace where
limestone is melted down to lime for use in making mortar or
fertilizer. It
was erected in the 1850s and remains as a monument to the proposed
Allentown
& Auburn Railroad.


Railroads were the dot.com companies of pre-Civil War America. Every
town
longed to see its name linked by a railroad's gilded ampersand
(''&'') to
another town or city. It didn't seem to matter that rolling stock was
sometimes rickety, boilers prone to exploding and rails - often held
to ties
by leather straps - came loose and smashed through the bottoms of the
wooden
passenger cars. Railroads were the future.

The Lehigh Valley shared America's love affair with the iron horse.
''So
necessary have they become in this age,'' said Allentown's Lehigh
Register
on Nov. 9, 1853, ''that no town can expect to prosper without these
means of
communications to the business world.''

Barely two months before, on Sept. 19, 1853, the state Legislature
granted a
charter for the construction of the Allentown & Auburn. The driving
force
was the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, better known simply as the
Reading.

The A & A was to be constructed from Allentown. Lehigh County stops
would
include Dorneyville, Wescosville, Trexlertown and Breinigsville.
Either a
spur route or the main line would service Kutztown. The A & A would
then
join the the Reading's main line, linking up to it at some point
between the
seat of Berks County and Port Clinton or Auburn in Schuylkill County.

Both offered links to the Schuylkill Navigation, a canal network that
ran
north into Schuylkill County's coal regions. Those black diamonds,
fuel for
the furnaces of the Valley's growing iron industry, were planned to
be the A
& A's major freight.

The Allentown & Auburn was not considered a significant railroad in
and of
itself. Its possible connections to the other railroads gave the A &
A the
potential to make Allentown a transportation center.

''The completion of this link is of great importance to our town and
county,'' Lehigh Register editor C.F. Haines wrote in 1855. ''It will
connect with the Lehigh Valley Road, and thus place us on the main
route
from New York, the commercial emporium of the Union, and to the great
West,
Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Chicago.''

Added links, the editor noted, could be made to Southern railroads
through
Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. St. Louis, Baltimore and even New Orleans
would
be only days, rather than months, away. ''There is no doubt,'' Haines
concluded, '' .that this link will be built.''

While dreams of Allentown as the rail hub of the East Coast danced
through
the heads of newspaper editors, engineers were busy laying out the
route.
Surveyors went to work under the direction of chief engineer M.E.
Lyons.

One thing they discovered was that a number of bridges would be
needed. Work
was begun on at least two. One was near where Cedar Creek flowed into
the
Little Lehigh, not far from where Lehigh Parkway is today. The other
was to
cross the Little Lehigh at Lehigh Street, where the main road came
from
Coopersburg, not far from where the Good Shepherd Home is today.

Investors in New York took up the A & A as the latest hot railroad
stock. On
Dec. 5, 1855, the Lehigh Register reprinted a letter from a
stockbroker
written to the Pottsville Miners Journal.

''In Wall Street our new road is attracting much attention. I have
had an
extensive intercourse with . others engaged in the railroad stock
business .
and none of them question the importance of the Allentown road.'' The
writer
said that experts, who would today be known as stock analysts,
regarded the
A & A, ''as a splendid investment - one that cannot fail to be above
par in
the market.''

But what no one anticipated was the thin thread on which the railroad
boom
hung. Historians still debate what brought on the Panic of 1857, but
along
with the collapse of grain prices following the end of the Crimean
War in
Europe and a sudden rise in interest rates by the Bank of England,
excessive
speculation in railroad stocks is usually included.

The Wall Street tumble hit the Lehigh Valley hard.

Historian Kenneth Stamp states that at least 400,000 workers across
Pennsylvania and 20,000 workers in the state's iron region were
thrown out
of work in 1857. And the Valley was at the heart of the iron region.

Construction on the Allentown & Auburn stopped. But other railroads
with
more capital took advantage of its distress. On May 11, 1859, the
East
Pennsylvania Railroad, with a connection to the Lehigh Valley
Railroad at
Bethlehem, operated the first train from Reading to Allentown.

The Civil War brought prosperity to some railroads, but the Allentown
&
Auburn was not among them. There was a brief flurry of interest early
in
1869 when the Reading Railroad talked of reviving the line. The
Lehigh
Register claimed surveyors were hard at work.

But on May 1, 1869, the Reading's board agreed to lease the East
Pennsylvania Railroad for 999 years. It no longer needed the A & A.
On Jan.
10, 1871, the Reading opened a spur from the East Penn's main line at
Topton
to Kutztown, known as the Allentown Railroad, which mean the A & A
offered a
near duplication of services.

All that remained of the A & A were memories, bridge abutments and
the
limekiln. The abutments were there in 1914, nearly 60 years after
they were
built, when local historian Charles Rhoads Roberts wrote about them
in his
anniversary history of Lehigh County. They were still there in the
1930s
when Allentown architect John K. Heyl recalls seeing them.

According to Heyl's recollection it was the Works Progress
Administration,
the Depression era government work program, that finally dismantled
them. In
1936 the WPA used the stones for the 700-foot-long wall and
ornamental
gateway that have been a feature of Lehigh Parkway's Park Drive since
it
opened in late 1930s.

But the limekiln was spared. It remains today, both as a historic
artifact
and as a puzzle to future generations who know nothing about the long
gone
A&A railroad.

frank.whelan_@_mcall.com

Bernie Wagenblast
Transportation Communications Newsletter
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/transport-communications/


=================================
The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of
existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org



=================================
The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org

------------------------------