In fact, Penn Central had a LOT to do with the LV, as they owned about 80-90% of the company, dating back to 1962 when the PRR bought control to use the road as a pawn in the PC merger preparations. They put some of their people on the board, leased the LV a group of locomotives, and both roads would consolidate facilities and abandon redundant lines in favor of trackage rights on the other road in certain instances. All well documented.
The LV as a company ceased to exist about 1983 - Penn Central purchased all remaining outstanding shares and merged the company, to use the company's losses against their taxes. A few guys made some decent money at that point - that's how Morning Sun Books was founded, shares of LV stock bought for pennies in the 1970s in little groups here and there, sold for enough of a profit to become the investment that started that company.
Since there is no longer a Lehigh Valley, and this line was never conveyed to Conrail, there really is no one to sue except perhaps the corporate descendant of Penn Central - but even that company was taken over and merged into another one in the time since. Penn Central became American Premier Underwriters, or something like that, an insurance company.
In 1971 there really was no such thing as "environmental clean-up" - that stuff was in it's infancy, and it's not hard to find examples of pollution and deliberate dumping that went on for years as a by-product of manufacturing of all kinds. Plus, the LV was bankrupt at the time. Sometimes cleaning up after a wreck meant getting the wrecked cars out of the way, putting the track back in, and running trains again - I've seen photos of LV trains passing the aftermath of other derailments and LV owned or leased cars would just be left where they landed, and picked up or scrapped at a later time. (which is not uncommon, other bankrupt roads did similar things; scrap steel prices were a fraction of what they are now, it likely cost more to dispose of the wrecked cars than the steel was worth). I wouldn't be at all surprised if you start digging where this wreck was you will find pieces of railroad cars buried there.
The LV as a company ceased to exist about 1983 - Penn Central purchased all remaining outstanding shares and merged the company, to use the company's losses against their taxes. A few guys made some decent money at that point - that's how Morning Sun Books was founded, shares of LV stock bought for pennies in the 1970s in little groups here and there, sold for enough of a profit to become the investment that started that company.
Since there is no longer a Lehigh Valley, and this line was never conveyed to Conrail, there really is no one to sue except perhaps the corporate descendant of Penn Central - but even that company was taken over and merged into another one in the time since. Penn Central became American Premier Underwriters, or something like that, an insurance company.
In 1971 there really was no such thing as "environmental clean-up" - that stuff was in it's infancy, and it's not hard to find examples of pollution and deliberate dumping that went on for years as a by-product of manufacturing of all kinds. Plus, the LV was bankrupt at the time. Sometimes cleaning up after a wreck meant getting the wrecked cars out of the way, putting the track back in, and running trains again - I've seen photos of LV trains passing the aftermath of other derailments and LV owned or leased cars would just be left where they landed, and picked up or scrapped at a later time. (which is not uncommon, other bankrupt roads did similar things; scrap steel prices were a fraction of what they are now, it likely cost more to dispose of the wrecked cars than the steel was worth). I wouldn't be at all surprised if you start digging where this wreck was you will find pieces of railroad cars buried there.
