The Reading Company ( /ˈrɛdɪŋ/; Pronounced Redding. logotyped as Reading Lines), usually called the Reading Railroad, officially the Philadelphia and Reading Rail Road and then the Philadelphia and Reading Railway until 1924, operated in southeast Pennsylvania and neighboring states. Until the decline in anthracite loadings in the Coal Region after World War II, it was one of the most prosperous corporations in the United States. Reduced coal traffic coupled with highway competition and short hauls forced it into bankruptcy in the 1970s. The railroad was merged into Conrail in 1976, but the corporation lasted into 2000, disposing of real estate holdings.
As of December 31, 1929, 1460.3 route-miles and 3643.9 track-miles plus 163.9/321.7 on the Atlantic City RR; as of 31 Dec 1970, 1210 route-miles, 2772 track-miles not including PRSL.
Since the railroad served Atlantic City, New Jersey (via subsidiary The Atlantic City Railroad), the Reading Railroad is a property in the American version of the board game Monopoly.
Read more about Reading Company: Company Officers, Cultural References
Famous quotes containing the words reading and/or company:
“Human contacts have been so highly valued in the past only because reading was not a common accomplishment.... The world, you must remember, is only just becoming literate. As reading becomes more and more habitual and widespread, an ever-increasing number of people will discover that books will give them all the pleasures of social life and none of its intolerable tedium.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“We noticed several other sandy tracts in our voyage; and the course of the Merrimack can be traced from the nearest mountain by its yellow sand-banks, though the river itself is for the most part invisible. Lawsuits, as we hear, have in some cases grown out of these causes. Railroads have been made through certain irritable districts, breaking their sod, and so have set the sand to blowing, till it has converted fertile farms into deserts, and the company has had to pay the damages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)