Mountain Top Yard
Historic Mountain Top Yard, or Penobscot Yard in the lee of Penobscot Knob the nearby peak rising to tower over the drainage divide thorough which the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad. The large yard, and the purpose built company town, Sayre, Pennsylvania were founded as part of a planned program of expansion and extension to the young railroad's infrastructure—the yard was but one benchmark on the way to completing the goal of establishing competitive passenger rail service between New York City, as well as cities in Delaware such as Wilmington, cities in central New Jersey such as Trenton, and Eastern Pennsylvania cities including Philadelphia with Chicago and other Great Lakes Cities via Buffalo, New York. The Lehigh Valley was primarily first and foremost a coal road which transported high grade Anthracite to the big cities of the east and to steel mills along the Great Lakes and to the area in and around Chicago. The yard is a way point along the historic rail corridor that extends along the left bank Susquehanna River through the RBMN Duryea Yard and Mountain Top Yards down along the route of the historic Lehigh Canal and across the Delaware at Easton, Pennsylvania.
Late in 1871, the competing upstarts calling themselves the Lehigh Valley Railroad (LV) established themselves above and across the same pass in 1871 and extended that storied road to Sayre Yard astride the stateline between Waverly, New York and Sayre, Pennsylvania.
History
Until it's dismantlement under Conrail the yard engine maintenance building had the largest structure in the United States devoted to the maintenance and construction of railroad locomotives.
The yard was acquired by Reading Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad in 1996 during the dissolution of Conrail which had acquired the property in 1976 when the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad joined its properties to that ill-fated conglomerate enterprise.
