History of Pennsylvania Railroad Begins
with Organization of Company
March 31, 1847
Prior to 1809, Oliver Evans, of Philadelphia, urged repeatedly in public addresses the construction of a passenger railroad from Philadelphia to New York, and in that year attempted to form a company for this purpose.
In 1829 a railroad, sixteen miles long, from Honesdale to Carbondale, to carry coal, was completed.
In 1827 the Mauch Chunk railroad, nine miles long, was built to connect coal mines with the Lehigh River; the gauge was three feet seven inches, and wooden rails were faced with iron.
The Baltimore and Ohio finished, in 1829, the first six miles of track upon which passengers were carried.
The Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company was incorporated by special act of the Legislature of Pennsylvania, approved April 4, 1833.
The charter granted to the company, December 5, 1833, authorized it to construct a railroad from Reading to Philadelphia. At Reading it was proposed to connect with the Little Schuylkill Navigation and Railroad, which had been incorporated in 1827, to build a railroad from Tamaqua to Reading.
Then followed the development of the rails in this country, and the first T-rails made in America were rolled at the Montour Mill, in Danville, Pa., in 1845. This was also an American invention. The first rails, thirty feet in length, were made at the Cambria Iron Works, at Johnstown, Pa., in 1856.