Reading Company

Reading Company, American railroad in Pennsylvania, New York, and Delaware, absorbed into the Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail) in 1976. At its peak in the first half of the 20th century, it was the largest American carrier of anthracite coal.

It began as the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad in 1833, taking over several already established lines. On one of these lines, the Philadelphia, Germantown, and Norristown, the inventor Matthias Baldwin had operated his first locomotive in 1832. The engine was called Old Ironsides and ran only in good weather. (An advertisement read, “On rainy days horses will be attached.”)

The Philadelphia and Reading developed as a carrier of coal from the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania. In the 1870s it acquired 30 percent of the state’s anthracite lands, mainly in the Schuylkill and Western Middle coal districts. The burden of this investment forced it into receivership twice in the 1880s and again in 1896.

The Reading Company was organized in 1896 as a holding company of the Philadelphia and Reading Railway Company and the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company. The Reading Company became an operating company in 1923, merging the Philadelphia and Reading with a number of subsidiary lines it had acquired. Subsequently it merged many other small Pennsylvania lines. By 1971 the Reading Company had been forced into receivership again. In 1974 a federal court found against reorganization, and most of its rail properties were purchased by the federally chartered Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail) in 1976.