Bessemer and Lake Erie Railroad

The Bessemer and Lake Erie Railroad was a Class II railroad that operated in northwestern Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio, tracing its origin to the Shenango and Allegheny Railroad of October 1869 and formally established in 1897 by Andrew Carnegie as the Pittsburgh, Bessemer and Lake Erie Railroad Company, renamed to its familiar form in 1900. Headquartered in Homewood, Illinois and carrying the reporting mark BLE, its 139-mile main line ran from Conneaut, Ohio, to Penn Hills, Pennsylvania, transporting iron ore from Lake Erie ports and Pennsylvania coal between the two regions, commodities that remain the route's major freight today. The Canadian National Railway acquired the line in 2004 and continues to operate it as the Bessemer Subdivision.