For many decades, the Borough of Lehighton, PA had long considered itself a railroad town. Founded in 1746 by the Moravian Brethren, the town saw significant growth with the arrival of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, nicknamed the 'Route of the Black Diamond' due to the amount of hard, anthracite coal it carried along its route. Additionally, the Central Railroad of New Jersey boasted trackage through town, paralleling the Lehigh Valley on the opposite side of the Lehigh River on its run north from Allentown through the Lehigh Gorge. By the early 1970s, CNJ had ended all operations in Pennsylvania after coal traffic dried up and by 1976, both CNJ and LV were assumed under Conrail. The Lehigh Valley main was abandoned between Allentown and Lehighton with Conrail favoring the CNJ side of the river until reaching the yard at Lehighton. Conrail sold the northern portion of its Lehigh Line to the Reading & Northern in the mid-1990s before Norfolk Southern assumed control in 1999. Today, Lehighton is but a shell of its former self. The yard is used as a small interchange between R&N and NS and at times between the locals from Hazelton and Allentown. Eastbound Buffalo to Allentown train 13T eases through the yard limits on a summer afternoon. 13T became 36T after the D&H acquisition about two months after this photo was taken. By 2020, through traffic on this portion of the Lehigh Line was gone.
