Nittany Valley Railroad

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nittany Valley Railroad

Locale	Pennsylvania
Dates of operation	1888 – 1914
Successor line	abandoned
Track gauge	4 ft 8½ in (1435 mm) (standard gauge)
Headquarters	Bellefonte

The Nittany Valley Railroad was a Pennsylvania shortline built to haul iron ore to blast furnaces near Bellefonte.

The company was incorporated on March 15, 1887. It was opened in 1888, running from a connection with the Bellefonte, Nittany and Lemont Railroad (a Pennsylvania Railroad subsidiary) in the valley of Logan Branch south of Bellefonte, 4.8 miles to the ore banks at Taylors. The Nittany Furnace of the Valentine Iron Company, which consumed the ore, was located in the vicinity of the interchange. It was opened in 1888.

In 1893, the Central Railroad of Pennsylvania built across its tracks on the east side of Bellefonte, near the Nigh Bank iron mines, and made a connection there. The Central Railroad and the Nittany Valley were both under the control of John Wesley Gephart, president of Valentine Iron, who began routing traffic from Nittany Furnace over the Nittany Valley and then via the Central Railroad to Mill Hall. However, the Centre Iron Company, which had formerly owned the furnace, had made an exclusive contract to ship its products over the Bellefonte, Nittany & Lemont (now the Bald Eagle Valley Railroad). A court initially found in favor of the Nittany Valley, but the judgement was reversed on appeal in 1895 and the contract was held to be binding upon Valentine Iron. Gephart stepped down from the presidency in the wake of the affair.

After the exhaustion of the ore bank, the railroad was used to haul limestone. However, the exhaustion of local ore deposits and the obsolete nature of the local iron furnaces made them increasingly vulnerable. Nittany Furnace shut down in 1911 and was scrapped in 1913. With the loss of its major customer, the Nittany Valley was shut down in 1914, and scrapped in the mid-1920s.

[edit] External links

http://bellefonte.topcities.com/oddsends/ Newspaper clippings from Bellefonte newspapers, many containing information about railroads and iron companies.