Established in 1833 as the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, the Reading finished its initial 94-mile Main Line between the coal fields of Schuylkill County and Philadelphia in 1842, fueling Philadelphia's Industrial Revolution. By the 1870s, the Reading's empire included coal mines, canals, retail coal dealers, and a coastal coal shipping fleet, and later expansion served eastern Pennsylvania and the states of Delaware and New Jersey. Incorporated in 1846, the Pennsylvania Railroad opened its first track between Harrisburg and Lewistown in 1849, and by 1852 connected Philadelphia to Pittsburgh; based in Philadelphia, it grew to become the largest railroad in the United States, and at its 1920s peak its 26,000-mile system served Baltimore, Washington, DC., Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and New York City. By the 1880s the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central Railroad, based in New York City, fiercely competed for business, leading the New York Central to form an alliance with the Reading against the Pennsylvania Railroad. In retaliation, the Pennsylvania Railroad built the Pennsylvania Schuylkill Valley Railroad between Philadelphia and the anthracite region to undercut the Reading's lucrative coal business, but after its completion in 1886 it never achieved the traffic volume of the parallel Reading Main Line. Because of fewer coal hauls, the decline and closure of manufacturing and industry in the northeastern U.S., and increased competition from an improved highway system, the Reading declared bankruptcy in 1971. Penn Central Railroad, formed in 1968 by a Pennsylvania Railroad and New York Central merger, declared bankruptcy two years later for similar reasons. In 1976, they were merged with four other failed railroads to create the Consolidated Rail Corporation. The Reading and Pennsylvania Railroad lines are now owned by Norfolk Southern, CSX, and various local railroads, with some former lines north of Reading sold to the Reading, Blue Mountain, and Northern Railroad and abandoned sections south of Reading becoming the Schuylkill River Trail.