{"id":287331,"date":"2026-09-16T13:52:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T13:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/287331\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T13:52:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T13:52:11","slug":"pennsylvania-county-agency-to-sell-rail-line-to-r-j-corman-railroad-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/287331\/","title":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania county agency to sell rail line to R.J. Corman Railroad Group"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">WEST PITTSTON, Pa. &#8211; The Luzerne County Redevelopment Authority has voted to sell the county&#8217;s 60-mile rail line to current operator R.J. Corman Railroad Group for $8.2 million, rather than accept a $10 million offer from Reading and Northern.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The Reading and Northern&#8217;s offer was for $7 million cash at closing plus $3 million to repair track during the first three years of ownership. Reading and Northern had offered to bring passenger excursions to Wilkes-Barre, extending its current excursion route from Reading and Jim Thorpe, Pa., in addition to providing freight service.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">R.J. Corman has operated 27 miles of the trackage as the Luzerne &amp; Susquehanna Line since October 2020. The railroad serves 11 customers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\"><a data-ylk=\"slk:The Times-Leader newspaper reported;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;link&quot;,&quot;yLinkElementType&quot;:&quot;article_link&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.timesleader.com\/news\/1755222\/luzerne-county-rail-line-sale-takes-unexpected-turn-as-r-j-corman-gets-nod-from-redevelopment-authority\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">The Times-Leader newspaper reported<\/a> that Korey Colyer, R.J. Corman&#8217;s chief strategy officer, said during public comment before the vote on Tuesday that its bid &#8220;put forth the highest value&#8221; with $8.2 million in cash.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Reading and Northern Chairman and CEO Andy Muller Jr. said Tuesday he was surprised by the redevelopment authority&#8217;s vote because a five-citizen committee unanimously determined his railroad was the best choice. &#8220;We won this on our merits. For the redevelopment authority to ignore this is a little bit suspicious,&#8221; Muller said, according to the newspaper.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The line is being sold to settle litigation between Luzerne County and the redevelopment authority. The county sued the redevelopment agency last year over $3.3 million that had not been repaid from loans by the county to allow purchase of the rail line three decades ago; the sale will allow the authority to pay its debt.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The county has the right to reject the bid prior to the Oct. 9 closing of the transaction.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8211; To report news or errors, contact <a data-ylk=\"slk:trainsnewswire@firecrown.com;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;link&quot;,&quot;yLinkElementType&quot;:&quot;article_link&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/news\/us\/articles\/mailto:trainsnewswire@firecrown.com\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">trainsnewswire@firecrown.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WEST PITTSTON, Pa. &#8211; The Luzerne County Redevelopment Authority has voted to sell the county&#8217;s 60-mile rail line&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[803,87052,28,30,29,119564,119563,119565,31712],"class_list":["post-287331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-luzerne-county","tag-northern","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-r-j-corman-railroad-group","tag-rail-line","tag-rail-lines","tag-redevelopment-authority"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}