Samuel Rea

He joined the PRR in 1871, when the railroad had hardly outgrown its 1846 charter to build from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh, and helped it grow to a 12,000-mile (19,000 km) system with access to Manhattan, upstate New York, and New England.

His paternal grandfather, General John Rea, was the United States representative from Bedford and Franklin, Pennsylvania, during the terms of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

In his new position, he reported directly to President George Brooke Roberts, and began to explore options for crossing the Hudson.

Eventually, he renewed his support for Lindenthal's bridge proposal, but other railroads declined to share the project's costs, and the financial constraints of the Panic of 1893 made that prospect unlikely for the rest of the decade.

[citation needed] As it dug its Hudson tunnel, the PRR also began construction of its massive Pennsylvania Station in New York City.

It was built to accommodate half a million daily passengers, and Rea, who became PRR president in 1913, found himself fending off charges that the station had been wastefully overbuilt.

Rea was considered largely responsible for many features of the Esch-Cummins Act, whereby the railroads were returned to private control in 1920 after World War I.

[8] Rea was a member of the exclusive South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, whose earthen dam failed in May 1889, causing the Johnstown Flood.

After the flood, Rea removed to Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, to an estate called "Waverly Heights," designed by architect Addison Hutton.