253 Pa. 251 | Pa. | 1916
Opinion by
The Lehigh and New England Railroad Company is a composite corporation made up of several railroad companies, which agreeably to law have been merged into it along with their respective rights and franchises. It is not necessary to distinguish these further than to say that one of them was the Bethlehem Railroad Company chartered by and under an act of assembly approved May 1, 1862, P. L. 586. To a provision in this charter we shall have occasion to refer later. The defendant consolidated company was chartered under the general railroad law approved April 4,1868, P. L. 62. It enjoys, therefore, the rights and privileges that are conferred by the Act of April 4,1868, on such corporations, as well as those derived through the merger of its constituents and such as are given by the general railroad Act of February 19, 1849, P. L. 79, subject of course to the restrictions contained. It maintains and operates a line of railroad which extends through the Borough of Bethlehem. On December 8, 1913, this company constructed a single track of about 100 feet in length from a point upon its main line within the Borough of Bethlehem across a public street known as Conestoga street in said
It is first of all necessary to determine just what this line of track that the company has built and of which the borough complains, is. It has been variously denominated in this proceeding. The chancellor in his findings and conclusions speaks of it as a siding; counsel for the railroad company speak of it as a lateral road, while counsel for appellant argues that it is a private switch; and much confusion and wasted effort has resulted from this failure to observe proper distinctions. It is certainly not a siding, and just as certainly it is not a switch. Construing literally the term “lateral track,” the term would be sufficiently comprehensive to include such a track as we have here, and it has most frequently been used in legislative enactments in this wider sense, as for instance in the general railroad Act of 1849 where, in the tenth section, the right is given to enter upon private lands and thereupon to lay down, erect, construct and establish a railroad with one or more tracks with such branches or lateral roads as may be specifically authorized. Here manifestly the term “lateral” was used interchangeably with the word branch,