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The Central Railroad of Pennsylvania was a short railroad of built to connect Bellefonte, Pennsylvania with the Beech Creek Railroad (part of the New York Central) at Mill Hall, Pennsylvania. Sustained by shipments from the Bellefonte iron industry, the abandonment of the iron furnaces there led to its demise in 1918. ==Origins== The Central Pennsylvania Railroad was incorporated on May 11, 1889 to connect Unionville with Mill Hall, running by way of Bellefonte and the Nittany Valley. On December 11, 1890, the Central Pennsylvania Railroad Eastern Extension was incorporated, to leave the main line of the first company at Lamar and follow Fishing Creek, Sand Spring Run, and White Deer Creek to White Deer on the Susquehanna. This would provide a connection to the Philadelphia and Reading Railway, in addition to that with the NYC at Mill Hall. The two companies were merged on September 11, 1891. However, the original investors, all of them from Watsontown, Pennsylvania, made little headway in construction. The president was Samuel H. Hicks, who was also general manager and superintendent of the Wilkes-Barre and Western Railway; this railroad terminated at Watsontown, across the Susquehanna from White Deer, and represented a possible connection with the eastern extension. The next year, Philadelphia and New York investors appeared among the directors, including Robert C. Bellville, secretary and treasurer of the Wilkes-Barre & Western, and Charles M. Clement, a prominent Sunbury lawyer and the new general counsel for the railroad. Still, the company lacked the resources to do more than grade of right-of-way at Mill Hall in the summer of 1892. The railroad was saved by the entrance of J. Wesley Gephart, a prominent Bellefonte businessman and president of the Valentine Iron Company. At the time, the only railroad outlet for the iron company's Valentine Furnace was via the Pennsylvania Railroad, whose rates Gephart found excessive. After lengthy and fruitless negotiations, Gephart convinced the financial backers of Valentine Iron that the company could not remain profitable without an independent railroad outlet to break the PRR's monopoly on freight traffic. They chose the Central Railroad as their instrument. Although contemporary reports indicate that local subscriptions of $75,000 towards construction were received, the principal financing for the railroad was arranged by the sale of $600,000 in fifteen-year bonds of the railroad to Drexel and Company. In the spring of 1893, the Drexel interests came onto the railroad's board of directors. Walter L. Ross, a banker affiliated with Drexel & Co., became the new president of the railroad, Hicks being demoted to vice-president, and William J. McHugh secretary and treasurer.〔 Besides Ross and McHugh, William M. McLaughlin and Charles O. Kruger were added to the board; Hicks, Clement, and James I. Higbee, of Watsontown, remained of the previous directors. Gephart was appointed general superintendent and placed in charge of construction in June 1893. The eastern extension to White Deer was never built, but from 1892 to 1893, the route from Mill Hall to Bellefonte was constructed, and the line opened on December 2, 1893. With the eastern extension out of the picture, the Central could have held little interest for the Watsontown group. Hicks and Higbee left the board in 1894; their replacements were Charles W. Wilhelm, of Reading, who succeeded Hicks as vice-president, Edward L. Welsh, of Philadelphia, and Robert Valentine, a director of Valentine Iron. McLaughlin did not appear on the board at the time,〔''Poor's Manual'', 1895, p. 80〕 but apparently returned to replace Kruger later that year. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Central Railroad of Pennsylvania (1891–1918)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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