Freight was vitally important to the Railroads. Freight trains was where they made their revenue, which in large part, subsidized their passenger service. This 1905 photo was taken inside the freight office of the Allentown Terminal Railroad which was a short-line operation developed as a joint venture by the Central Railroad of New Jersey and the East Penn Branch of the Reading Railroad. Just before the Civil War, the CNJRR built a small freight station on the east side of the Lehigh River, next to the Lehigh Canal. In the early 1900s, they moved their freight and passenger business about a block east of the Lehigh Valley Railroad Station on Hamilton Street.