Duryea Yard

Duryea yard was established in the early adolescence of railroad history in Pennsylvania by the Lehigh Valley Railroad and operated by that Class I railroad for many decades. According to 2010 news accounts, it is operated by the Reading Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad (RBMN or often called the nickname 'Reading and Northern') which may have renamed the yard the Muller yard as this 'new' sign indicates as the track crosses Coxton Road in Duryea and enters the northern tip of the wye along the shore of the Lackawanna-Susquehanna River confluence in West Pittston. after passing the Main and Coxton Road, Duryea crossing after wending its way northwards through the Lehigh River Gorge State Park and climbing the ridges from White Haven.

Duryea Yard, formerly Coxton Yard, and sometimes called West Pittston Yard — or as named by its latest lessee, Muller Yard — was built in 1870 by the Lehigh Valley Railroad as a turn around and staging hub to move coal from the North Anthracite Region of Pennsylvania's Coal Regions to Eastern big-city markets when the Railroad successfully established trackage up the Lehigh Valley corridor.

Founding

Founded as part of an successful attempt to found a Joint-stock company specifically to break up the transportation monopoly in bulk goods shipping built up by the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company (LC&N) over the Wyoming-Lehigh-Delaware Valleys route. The corridor makes a nearly direct route to the big eastern cities markets that had been held since 1837-38 by LC&Ns canal operations and its railroad subsidiary, the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad.

Location

The yard is located physically on the main Susquehanna River branch and in the peninsula formed by the confluence of the Lackawanna and Susquehanna Rivers, and the main Wyoming Valley entrances are through a railyard wye. The railyard is located in the Borough of Duryea, Pennsylvania a secondary community and neighborhood abutting Pittston, Pennsylvania, both of which are in the northwest of greater Wilkes-Barre and Hazelton area in the southern Wyoming Valley. During the 20th century the rail yard was a very active place until after World War II, when pragmatic large dump trucks began to supplant rail for bulk hauling. It declined further as rail companies shifted to diesel-electric locomotion attempting to cut costs and remain competitive as the assault on rail continued with development of the Interstate Highway System. This movement to interstate highways was somewhat delayed in the business climate of the mountainous Eastern Pennsylvania terrain, but the shift away from diesel was eliminating much of the revenues there and ironically, the railroads days of steady profits would come from carrying the cement and steel products that built the interstate highways which would accelerate the end days of many railroads servicing niche needs. The Duryea railyard declined with other railroad activity as land transport shifted to trucking and personal motor cars in the 1950s–1970s and was largely unused by the start of the 21st century.

Recent developments

In late 2009 and early 2010, The Reading Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad expanded operations due to the emergence of Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling in northeastern Pennsylvania. The Reading & Northern Railroad spent $100,000 to transform the Pittston Yard to a sand transloading facility to transfer sand from rail cars to trucks, which is then used by natural gas well drillers in the Marcellus Shale region. The upgrades to the railyard included laying new track to accommodate 100 new rail cars and constructing a facility to store and hold up to 800 cars of sand to be used in hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” operations at Marcellus Shale drill sites throughout Northeastern Pennsylvania.