competing anthracite railroad which had entered bankruptcy as well. The two roads had entered a shared trackage agreement in this area in 1965 to reduce costs, as both had parallel routes from Wilkes-Barre virtually all the way to metropolitan New York, often on adjoining grades through Pennsylvania. In the years leading to 1973, the freight railroad system in the northeast of the U.S. was collapsing. Although government-funded Amtrak took over intercity passenger service on May 1, 1971, railroad companies continued to lose money due to extensive government regulations, expensive and excessive labor cost, competition from other transportation modes, declining industrial business and other factors; the Lehigh Valley Railroad was one of them. Hurricane Agnes in 1972 damaged the rundown Northeast railway network, which put the solvency of other railroads including the LVRR in danger; the somewhat more solvent Erie Lackawanna Railway (EL) was also damaged by Hurricane Agnes. In 1973, the United States Congress acted to create a bill to nationalize all bankrupt railroads which included the LV. The Association of American Railroads, which opposed nationalization, submitted an alternate proposal for a government-funded private company. President Richard Nixon signed the Regional Rail Reorganization Act of 1973 into law. The "3R Act," as it was called, provided interim funding to the bankrupt railroads and defined a new "Consolidated Rail Corporation" under the AAR's plan. On April 1, 1976, the LVRR, including its main line, was merged into the U.S. government's Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail) ending 130 years of existence and 121 years of operation of the LVRR. Surviving segments Background Conrail Ownership On April 1, 1976, major portions of the assets of the bankrupt Lehigh Valley Railroad were acquired by Conrail. This primarily consisted of the main line and related branches from Van Etten Junction, northwest of Sayre, Pennsylvania) to Oak Island Yard, the Ithaca branch from Van Etten Junction to Ithaca, New York, connecting to the Cayuga Lake line and on to the Milliken power station in Lake Ridge, New York (closed on August 29, 2019) and the Cargill salt mine just south of Auburn; and small segments in Geneva, New York (from Geneva to the Seneca Army Depot in Kendaia); Batavia, New York; Auburn, New York, and Cortland, New York. A long segment west from Van Etten Junction to Buffalo was included in the Conrail takeover, but was mostly torn-up not long afterward. Additionally, a segment from Geneva to