LEHIGH VALLEY RAILROAD COM PANY, The, was incorporated by an act of the legislature of Pennsylvania, 21 April 1846, as the Delaware, Lehigh, Schuylkill and Susque hanna Railroad Company; its name was changed to Lehigh Valley Railroad Company 7 Jan. 1853.
The Lehigh Valley Railroad system is to day a double-track trunk line extending through the States of New Jersey, Pennsyl vania and New York, from the Atlantic Sea board to the Great Lakes. The main line runs from New York to Buffalo, N. Y., a distance of 448 miles. The entire mileage of the system in 1916 was 1,443.69 miles, of which 596.47 was double track. The company possesses ter minals on the Hudson River front opposite New York city, at Perth Amboy, N. J., and on Lake Erie at Buffalo, N. Y. The company also controls the Lehigh Valley Coal Company and the Morris Canal, 106.48 miles in length. At the eastern end of the line in New York har bor the company owns a fleet of 286 boats.
The rolling equipment of the road 30 June 1916 consisted of 971 locomotives (passenger, freight and switching), 631 passenger-car equip ment, 43,579 freight-car equipment (of which 18,322 are coal cars). The total earnings of the system for the year ended 30 June 1916 were $47,382,569; expenses of operation for the same period, $33,092,978; net earnings from operations, $14,289,591; percentage, operating expenses to gross earnings, 69.82 per cent. The amount of merchandise freight moved for the year ending 30 June 1916, exclusive of com pany's material, was 19,752,591 tons. For the same period the coal tonnage, not including supply coal, amounted to 13,959,754 tons; :he coal tonnage amounted to 70.67 per cent of the total tonnage hauled during the year.