The Reading Railroad: Coal, Capital, and the Monopoly Square
Near Reading, Pennsylvania
Of the four railroads on the classic Monopoly board, one is named for a Pennsylvania city. The Reading Railroad, or more formally the Reading Company, began as the Philadelphia and Reading Rail Road in eighteen thirty-three, incorporated for a single purpose: to move anthracite coal out of the mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania and down the Schuylkill River valley to the Port of Philadelphia.
The route nature provided was almost uncanny in its convenience. The Schuylkill River runs nearly due south from the coal region to Reading, then bends southeast toward Philadelphia, following a gentle gradient the entire way. Locomotive-hauled coal trains simply followed the river. Engineers barely needed to grade the right of way. From its founding, the original main line was built as a double-track railroad, an unusually ambitious choice for the time, reflecting how much traffic the organizers anticipated.
They were right to anticipate it. Energy-dense anthracite coal had been replacing increasingly scarce wood as fuel in businesses and homes since the eighteen tens, and the Reading railroad delivered it to markets that had no other reliable source. The company became profitable almost immediately. By eighteen seventy-one, with a market capitalization of one hundred and seventy million dollars, the Reading was reportedly one of the largest corporations in the world.
That extraordinary wealth concentrated in this city. The railroad's engine works and repair shops were here. The company's management was here. The wages of thousands of employees circulated through Reading's shops, banks, and neighborhoods. For most of the nineteenth century, Reading and the Reading Railroad were inseparable.
The game board squares honor that era. When Charles Darrow adapted the Atlantic City street-grid game that became Monopoly in the nineteen thirties, the Reading Railroad was still one of the defining corporate realities of the American eastern seaboard. Its name belongs on that board.
