Mine Hill and Schuylkill Haven Railroad Company

The Mine Hill & Schuylkill Haven Railroad Company was incorporated under the laws of Pennsylvania on March 24, 1828, and was leased by the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company on May 12, 1864. It was extinguished by merger into the Reading Company on October 1, 1951.

The first section of the Mine Hill & Schuylkill Haven Railroad was opened in 1830 from Coal Castle in the Schuylkill Coal Field west of Pottsville, Pa. to Schuylkill Haven on the Schuylkill Canal. Over the next twenty-five years, over fifty miles of branches opened the entire central portion of the field. Locomotives first replaced horses in 1847. In 1854, trackage was extended over Broad Mountain via the Gordon Planes, opening the hitherto isolated Western Middle Coal Field to eastern markets. The MH&SH was the largest and wealthiest of the so-called Schuylkill County coal laterals and as such resisted absorption by the Reading System. Beginning in the 1850s, it supported movements to build an independent outlet to tidewater. In 1862, it pledged its entire coal traffic to the Schuylkill Canal, and in 1863 it began construction of the Schuylkill Haven & Lehigh River Railroad to open an alternate route via the Lehigh Valley Railroad. In the ensuing rate war it was defeated by the Reading, which thereby secured a monopoly of the Schuylkill coal trade.