The "Alphabet Route" (Railroad): Photos and History

Last revised: September 15, 2026

The Alphabet Route was not a railroad. It was a through-freight map stitched from eight companies that the Pennsylvania, the New York Central, the Erie, and the Baltimore & Ohio did not own. The name was the initials: Nickel Plate, Wheeling & Lake Erie, Pittsburgh & West Virginia, Western Maryland, Reading, Jersey Central, Lehigh & Hudson River, New Haven. On February 11, 1931 the Pittsburgh & West Virginia opened its extension into Connellsville, Pennsylvania, and the last gap closed. From that day a shipper could move a car Chicago or East St. Louis to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, or Boston without giving the big four a haul. The hot trains were the Alpha Jets. The consortium lasted about fifty years. Mergers, not a lack of cars, ended it.

George Gould had tried to build this map as one empire and failed. The Alphabet Route was the cooperative version: separate presidents, separate shops, a handshake on schedules and divisions. It was a few hours slower than a Pennsylvania or Central flyer and more flexible about when the freight showed up. The member companies are their own encyclopedias. This page is the routing: Connellsville, Shippensburg, Maybrook, the Jets, and the day the map belonged to Norfolk & Western, Chessie, and Conrail.

Jersey Central SD40 3066 and 3069 lead a westbound freight through Ashley Pennsylvania June 27 1971

Jersey Central SD40 #3066 (ex-B&O #7487) and #3069 (ex-B&O #7490) lead a westbound freight through Ashley, Pennsylvania, along Main Street on June 27, 1971. American-Rails.com collection.

On this page: At a glance · Gould’s map · Connellsville, February 11, 1931 · West of Pittsburgh Junction · P&WV, Western Maryland, Reading · Jersey Central, L&HR, New Haven · Alpha Jets · Mergers, the bridge, Conrail · What remains

At a glance

Item	Detail
What it was	A through-freight routing and marketing arrangement among eight railroads, not a chartered company
Name	The initials of the eight, not the fact that there were eight
Opened as a through map	February 11, 1931, P&WV Connellsville extension to the Western Maryland
Ended	New England piece with the Poughkeepsie Bridge fire May 8, 1974. The rest faded through Chessie and Conrail into the early 1980s
West to east	Nickel Plate · Wheeling & Lake Erie · Pittsburgh & West Virginia · Western Maryland · Reading · Jersey Central · Lehigh & Hudson River · New Haven
Against	Pennsylvania, New York Central, Erie, Baltimore & Ohio
Chicago–Shippensburg–Boston	1,174.6 miles
Chicago–Shippensburg–New York	962.1 miles
Chicago–Shippensburg–Philadelphia	894.8 miles
Chicago–Shippensburg–Baltimore	792.8 miles
St. Louis–Shippensburg–Boston	1,170.8 miles
St. Louis–Shippensburg–New York	958.3 miles
St. Louis–Shippensburg–Philadelphia	891 miles. Add 41.9 miles via York, Pennsylvania
St. Louis–Shippensburg–Baltimore	789 miles
Priority trains	Alpha Jets: AJ-1 and later PAJ-1 / WAJ-1 westbound; AJ-2, AJ-12 eastbound. P&WV also symbolled MS-1 (Michigan Steeler), AJ-3, AJ-4, BT-1

Mileages follow the live operating table compiled from the member roads’ timetables. Connellsville date is the P&WV extension. Information compiled September 15, 2026.

Gould’s map

Jay Gould’s son George spent the 1900s trying to string a transcontinental that was not Vanderbilt, not Harriman, and not the Pennsylvania. In the East that meant the Wabash into Pittsburgh as the Wabash-Pittsburgh Terminal, the Western Maryland pushed west from Cumberland, and a hoped-for meeting in the Youghiogheny country. The Terminal opened in 1904, went into receivership in 1908, and was reorganized in 1917 as the Pittsburgh & West Virginia. The Western Maryland’s Connellsville Subdivision, a $12 million, 88-mile mountain railroad, opened in 1912 to a Pittsburgh & Lake Erie interchange—not yet to the P&WV. Gould’s map stopped one connection short.

The 1920s ICC “Fifth System” talk, and the Prince Plan consolidations that died in the Depression, kept the same idea alive: a fifth eastern trunk assembled from the leftovers. The leftovers preferred contracts to merger. The Nickel Plate, not the Wabash, would be the Chicago and St. Louis end. The P&WV applied in 1927 to build Connellsville. The ICC approved in 1928, 5–4, over the examiner. Pennroad, the Pennsylvania’s investment company, bought control of the P&WV in 1929. The extension opened anyway. The Alphabet Route was Gould’s geography without Gould’s holding company. The Wabash as a company is the Wabash.

Connellsville, February 11, 1931

The P&WV’s new iron ran from Pierce, Pennsylvania, where it left the West Side Belt, into Connellsville. It did not spike into Western Maryland rail. A short piece of Pittsburgh & Lake Erie made the handoff. From that day a westbound could come off the WM Connellsville Sub, cross the P&LE, climb onto the P&WV, run the high line around Pittsburgh instead of through it, meet the Wheeling & Lake Erie at Pittsburgh Junction, Ohio, and ride the Nickel Plate to Chicago or East St. Louis. Eastbound was the reverse. The Western Maryland already advertised itself as the Fast Freight Line. The eight-road map gave that slogan a continent.

Shippensburg and Lurgan, Pennsylvania, were the older eastern joint. The Western Maryland had reached Shippensburg in the 1880s and, with the Reading, tightened the Hagerstown–Shippensburg corridor by 1899. That was the WM–Reading door years before anyone said Alphabet. Maybrook, New York, and the Poughkeepsie Bridge (first train December 29, 1888) were the New Haven’s door to New England without a New York Harbor float. Connellsville in 1931 did not invent those gates. It connected them to Chicago.

West of Pittsburgh Junction

The Nickel Plate was the western machine. From Bellevue, Ohio, where the Wheeling & Lake Erie came in, the road had two mains: 275.6 miles to Chicago, 271.8 to East St. Louis, timetable miles. Bellevue Yard was the classification plant. The Nickel Plate already ran hot merchandise against the Central and the Pennsylvania; the Alphabet trains were more of that, with a Connellsville connection instead of a Buffalo or Fort Wayne argument.

The Wheeling & Lake Erie was the short hop: about 131 miles, Bellevue to Pittsburgh Junction. No big yard in the middle. Toledo sat on the W&LE as a Lake Erie door. Nickel Plate leased the W&LE on December 1, 1949, which put two of the eight initials under one operating officer a decade and a half before Norfolk & Western took the Nickel Plate. The lease is a date here. The Wheeling as a company, including the 1990s regional that still runs the P&WV, is its own page.

P&WV, Western Maryland, Reading

The Pittsburgh & West Virginia was a bridge railroad that happened to serve Pittsburgh steel. Rook Yard, the West Side Belt to Clairton, coal and coke—and 132 miles of Alpha Jets from Pittsburgh Junction to Connellsville, the whole railroad. It was one of two Alphabet members on which the priority trains used every mile. Passenger service on the P&WV died the same year the extension opened. Bridge traffic from off-line kept growing through the 1930s while coal sagged. That was the point of Connellsville.

The Western Maryland took the cars east over the Connellsville Sub: Big Savage Tunnel, the Keystone Viaduct, Cumberland, then Hagerstown. Jamison Yard at Hagerstown was a gathering point. Baltimore sat 254.2 miles from Connellsville on the WM; Shippensburg 202.6; the later York corridor 244.5. Shippers could peel a Baltimore car at Hagerstown and still send the New York and New England cars on to Lurgan. In later years some of that eastern interchange moved to York. The WM as a company is the Fast Freight Line page, not this one.

The Reading met the WM at Lurgan/Shippensburg and ran to Rutherford Yard, just east of Harrisburg, then to Reading. From there the map split: 153.6 miles Shippensburg–Philadelphia on Reading iron, 130.6 Shippensburg–Allentown for New York and New England. Rutherford assembled Reading’s own Philadelphia, Allentown, and New York blocks with the western Jets. The Reading had been a coal road that learned merchandise. The Alphabet trains were merchandise that happened to cross coal country.

Jersey Central, L&HR, New Haven

The Central Railroad of New Jersey took Allentown to Jersey City, 90.3 miles, into the New York harbor district. Boston cars did not need the Hudson terminals. They left the CNJ at Easton, a few miles east of Allentown, for the Lehigh & Hudson River. The photograph at the top of this page is CNJ in the coal country around Ashley in 1971, two ex-B&O SD40s on a westbound—Alphabet geography in the last decade, already wearing someone else’s locomotives.

Lehigh and Hudson River C420 28 at Warwick New York June 1974

Lehigh & Hudson River C420 #28 at Warwick, New York, June 1974. Most of the L&HR is abandoned. Warren Calloway photo.

The Lehigh & Hudson River was the other all-line Alphabet railroad: 85.8 miles, Easton/Phillipsburg to Maybrook. It existed to put Reading and Jersey Central cars on the Poughkeepsie Bridge without a float. Maybrook Yard, with Campbell Hall, was the New Haven classification plant. The L&HR entered Section 77 on April 19, 1972, after Penn Central stopped paying per diem. The bridge fire two years later finished the Maybrook business that had justified the little road. The June 1974 photograph at Warwick is a railroad that had already filed and had not yet been folded into Conrail.

The New Haven had the longest Alphabet haul east of Ohio: about 217 miles, Maybrook and Campbell Hall over the old Central New England corridor to Hartford, then Providence and Boston. Cedar Hill Yard at New Haven classified the rest of the system. Hell Gate was the passenger door into Manhattan. This freight did not need Hell Gate. It needed the cantilever at Poughkeepsie. The CNE as a company was already gone; the Alphabet used CNE track as New Haven track.

Alpha Jets

The middle of the map—Western Maryland, Pittsburgh & West Virginia, Nickel Plate, and later Norfolk & Western—generally ran two daily run-through freights each way via Connellsville. Westbounds were AJ-1, sometimes Advance AJ-1 or 1st and 2nd AJ-1, later PAJ-1 and WAJ-1. Eastbounds were AJ-2 and AJ-12, with an Advance AJ-12 when the board filled. Those trains originated or terminated at Reading’s Rutherford or at the WM’s Hagerstown and ran to or from Toledo and Detroit as well as Chicago and St. Louis. The P&WV’s own symbols included MS-1, the Michigan Steeler, and BT-1. Whatever the number, the Jets were the hottest freight on those roads after the varnish, and sometimes ahead of it.

Power in steam was each road’s. Diesels brought run-through locomotives on the WM–P&WV–NKP piece. The eastern roads still changed engines at the old handoffs. The selling point was never beating the Pennsylvania’s hours. The Route ran on the order of ten hours slower than a trunk-line flyer. What it sold was a morning or evening delivery the trunks did not always want to schedule, and a traffic man at eight companies who would pick up the phone. Friendly service is a cliché until the alternative is a four-track main that does not care about a two-car block for Allentown.

Mergers, the bridge, Conrail

The western three initials collapsed into one. Norfolk & Western took the Nickel Plate on October 16, 1964, already holding the Wheeling & Lake Erie lease, and leased the Pittsburgh & West Virginia the same year. After that the Alpha Jets west of Connellsville were N&W trains. The N&W as a company is Norfolk & Western.

The New Haven went into Penn Central on January 1, 1969, a condition of the PRR–NYC merger. Penn Central owned the two trunks the Alphabet had been laid out to avoid. Selkirk Yard on the Hudson was PC’s New England machine. Maybrook became a courtesy. By the early 1970s the bridge was down to on the order of one regular train each way. On May 8, 1974 a fire burned the Poughkeepsie deck. Penn Central did not rebuild it. New England Alphabet traffic ended that night. The span is the Poughkeepsie Bridge page.

Chessie System, Inc. became parent of the C&O, B&O, and Western Maryland on June 15, 1973. The WM was now inside a company that also owned the B&O, a trunk the Alphabet had been built to compete with. In 1975 Chessie abandoned the WM main Connellsville to Cumberland. A new connection at Sodem, near Connellsville, put P&WV cars on the B&O east instead of the WM mountain line. A semblance of the old routing continued, on B&O iron. Chessie as a holding company is Chessie System.

Conrail, April 1, 1976, took the Reading, the Jersey Central, the Lehigh & Hudson River, and the New Haven-in-Penn-Central. Three systems now owned the eight initials: N&W, Chessie, Conrail. None of them needed a marketing name for a route they already controlled, and two of them were historic rivals of the third. The Jets lost their reason. By the early 1980s the Alphabet Route as a billed service was gone.

What remains

The Pittsburgh & West Virginia main, Pittsburgh Junction to Connellsville, is a core piece of the modern Wheeling & Lake Erie, the 1990 Class II that took the name of the old Alphabet member. Norfolk Southern runs the Nickel Plate Chicago–Buffalo corridor. CSX has the Western Maryland and Reading fragments it wanted; the Connellsville Sub through Big Savage is a trail for long stretches, with the Keystone Viaduct still in the woods. Maybrook is not a classification yard. Most of the L&HR is gone. The Poughkeepsie Bridge is Walkway Over the Hudson. Jersey City’s CNJ waterfront is real estate.

The eight company encyclopedias are the places to read the presidents and the rosters. The Alphabet Route is the day in 1931 when Connellsville tied Gould’s unfinished map to Maybrook, and the fifty years of Alpha Jets that followed, until the trunks bought the leftovers and no longer needed the name.

Sources

Worley, Howard V., and William Poellot. The Pittsburgh & West Virginia Railway: The Story of the High and Dry. Withers Publishing, 1989. Connellsville extension; ICC 1928; Pennroad 1929; February 11, 1931
PRR Technical & Historical Society, PRR chronology 1931. P&WV Connellsville opening and Alphabet Route formation
Member-road employee timetables for the Chicago / St. Louis–Shippensburg–Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore mileages reproduced in the glance table
Western Maryland Railway, Connellsville Subdivision history (1912 opening to P&LE; 1931 P&WV connection; Fast Freight Line). Big Savage / Keystone as the mountain piece
Classic Trains / Trains: “Middleman of the Alphabet Route” (November 1956); Poughkeepsie Bridge fire May 8, 1974; L&HR Section 77 April 19, 1972
American-Rails.com company histories for operating dates: Nickel Plate into N&W October 16, 1964; W&LE lease to NKP December 1, 1949; New Haven into Penn Central January 1, 1969; Chessie System, Inc. parent June 15, 1973; Conrail April 1, 1976; WM Connellsville–Cumberland abandonment 1975 and Sodem connection
Poughkeepsie Bridge and Central New England encyclopedias on this site for Maybrook, the 1888 span, and CNE track as the New Haven’s Alphabet piece

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