Historical Setting
The Lehigh Valley Gorge has a rich history, and transportation has always played a role in that history. The gorge is steep-sided, the river is narrow and the drop from White Haven in the north and Jim Thorpe (previously named Mauch Chunk) in the south is approximately 500 feet in around 25 miles. Between White Haven and Jim Thorpe there is nothing but mountains, river, and rock. This combination is great for white water rafting - the Lehigh is one of the great white water trips on the east coast. The picture below gives you an idea of the scale and severity of the slopes and the curves of the river
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The Lehigh River (especially in the gorge) has resisted taming since man first tried to use it to move people and goods. These attempts were tied directly to the discovery of the world's most concentrated deposit of anthracite coal in the what's become known as the coal regions of Northeastern Pennsylvania. Anthracite (or hard coal) is almost pure carbon (nicknamed the Black Diamond), and burns very well (once you get it started) without producing soot or a great deal of smoke. Back in the 1800's, these qualities made it the perfect fuel to warm houses and buildings in cities, and steel mills. The problem was getting the hard coal out of the ground and into the cities and mills. Prior to the development of railroads and locomotives, the problem was solved by canals.
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The lower canal was great for moving coal from Jim Thorpe through to the Delaware River and there were fantastic coal fields in those hills. The canal was built between 1818 and 1820, and the lower section actually remained in operation until 1931, but the canal's principal designers (Josiah White and Erskine Hazard) desperately wanted to get to the big anthracite mines of Wilkes Barre and Scranton. Connecting those regions with the big cities in the east was a potentially huge financial windfall. Conquering that connection meant finding a way through the gorge, which is a much different environment than the lower section of the Lehigh, and meant development of massive lift gates to get boats up to the summit in White Haven. These were designed brilliantly by the Erie Canal's designer Canvass White and work started in 1837 and was finished in 1843. Two things would put an end to the upper section of the canal - weather (repeated heavy rains in 1862), and the development of railroads.
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Asa Packard saw the Lehigh Valley as the anchor of a rail empire, and eventually created a railroad that connected New York City to the great lakes through the rich coal fields of Northeastern Pennsylvania. The Lehigh Valley Railroad's double-track mainline would run right through the gorge until the formation of Conrail, and was not the only railroad to do the same. The Central Railroad of New Jersey would obtain rights to a railway that paralleled the LVRR through the gorge until the early 1970's when the CNJ would cease rail operations in Pennsylvania. The Lehigh and Hudson River and the Reading Railroad would also establish a presence in the Lehigh Valley (but not through the gorge). All of these railroads, plus the Penn Central and the Erie Lackawanna would become part of the Consolidated Rail Corporation, which started operation on April 1, 1976.
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Conrail had to make choices, and many of those were hard choices. What rail lines would be maintained under the new company and which would be abandoned? What services would shrink, and which would be expanded? What locomotives and rolling stock would be maintained and which would be scrapped? What color scheme would be adopted?
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Red was the color most associated with the LVRR, black for the PC, grey for the EL, green and yellow for the Reading. Maybe to emphasize a new start for the railway, a medium blue with white lettering was selected, but until paint could be procured, most of the railway's equipment remained in old colors and old logos. As a stopgap measure, some logos were painted out and replaced by a spartan "CR", often in the stencils of the Penn Central. Locomotives were troublesome, as the previous owners in their last years had badly neglected rails and locomotives.
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In the summer of 1976, railfans were treated to a period called the Rainbow Years when you could see just about anything on Conrail's trackage. I was 10 years old.
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By virtue of the establishment of Conrail, a new player entered the gorge. The Delaware and Hudson, not included in Conrail (although it could have been, it wasn't in great financial shape itself) received trackage rights to the former LVRR mainline from Wilkes Barre to the shores of New Jersey. They also received LVRR's Apollo and Mercury TOFC intermodal business - fast trains of trailers from Buffalo to New York and Washington. D&H also received some of LV's C420's and GP38's as well as GP39-2's from the Reading, and all of those locomotives got quick paint-outs and D&H locos.
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My layout tries to replicate that crazy time through the desolate streches of the gorge. Although there was still double-track operation in the gorge in 1976, I've only run a single track (as it is today).