Brandywine Valley Railroad

The Brandywine Valley Railroad reporting mark|BVRY is a class III railroad operating in Pennsylvania.

It was established in 1981 by the Lukens Steel Company to operate trackage at Coatesville, Pennsylvania and the neighboring town of Modena. It was acquired, with the rest of the Lukens properties, by Bethlehem Steel Corporation in 1998.cite web | url=http://www.bethintermodal.com/latest7.htm | title=Brandywine Valley Railroad Acquires Additional Tracks | accessdate=2007-05-13]

The Brandywine Valley's main line was originally built by the Wilmington and Northern Railroad, largely following the Brandywine Creek, to connect Reading with Wilmington, Delaware. By the time of the Brandywine Valley's formation, the line had been abandoned north of Valley Station, just north of Coatesville. BVRY took over the line from this point, the site of an interchange with Amtrak's Keystone Corridor, south to Modena, below which the ex-W&N was owned by PennDOT and operated by a number of shortlines over the years.

Under Bethlehem operation, BVRY took over operation of the Delaware Valley Railroad, then operating the remainder of the ex-Wilmington and Northern, in early 1999. This gave the railroad interchange access not only to Conrail at Coatesville (subsequently replaced by the Norfolk Southern Railroad), but to CSX Transportation at the southern end of the line at Elsmere, Delaware. It also thus began to operate a connecting branch of the former Pennsylvania Railroad from Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, on the W&N, to Nottingham.

After the acquisition of Bethlehem Steel's assets by International Steel Group in 2003, Brandywine Valley began to scale back its operations. The ex-PRR line, also known as the Octoraro line, was taken over in that year by the Morristown and Erie Railroad. [cite web | url=http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/14mar20010800/edocket.access.gpo.gov/2003/03-18577.htm | title=Morristown & Erie Railway, Inc.--Modified Rail Certificate | accessdate=2007-05-13] In 2005, the ex-W&N line south of Modena was turned over to the East Penn Railroad, reducing the Brandywine Valley to its original extent. [Surface Transportation Board, [http://www.stb.dot.gov/Decisions/readingroom.nsf/4f64b4f281696bd38525748f00683b57/403480c880e531b785256ff1004aac7c?OpenDocument East Penn Railways, Inc.—Acquisition and Operation Exemption—Reading Company] , May 6, 2005: "East Penn states that, pursuant to an agreement with ISG, it is also acquiring all of ISG's rights to operate the subject line. East Penn notes that ISG and its predecessors previously leased and operated the subject line per agreement with Reading." (footnote 1)]

With the merger of ISG in 2005, the railroad and steel plant are now owned by Mittal Steel Company.

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