Lackawanna Old Road

Lackawanna Old Road
Old Road bridge (built 1902) spanning the Delaware River, Delaware, New Jersey
Overview
Termini	Port Morris Junction Slateford Junction
Operation
Opened	1856
Closed	1970
Technical
Line length	39.6 mi (63.7 km)
Track gauge	1,435 mm (4 ft 8 ^1⁄2 in) standard gauge
Operating speed	70 mph (110 km/h)

Lackawanna Old Road

Legend to Scranton Slateford Junction Lackawanna Cut-Off Portland L&NE Delaware River U.S. 46 Blairstown Railway 79.8 Delaware 77.5 Manunka Chunk Bel-Del Manunka Chunk Tunnel Bridgeville L&HR / Paulinskill River 71.0 Oxford Furnace Oxford Tunnel 66.5 Washington Phillipsburg Branch Hampton Branch to CNJ 63.1 Port Murray 56.8 Hackettstown 51.2 Waterloo Sussex Branch 48.0 Netcong Port Morris Yard Lackawanna Cut-Off 45.5 Lake Hopatcong to Jersey City/Hoboken

The Lackawanna Old Road was part of the original mainline of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad (DL&W). Opened in 1856, it was for a half-century a part of the line connecting the states of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. In 1911, the DL&W cut 11 miles (18 km) off the route by opening the Lackawanna Cut-Off, which branched off from existing track at the new Port Morris Junction and Slateford Junction. The 39.6-mile (63.7 km) stretch of existing track between these junctions was relegated to secondary status and became known as the "Old Road".

History

The Old Road involves one railroad tycoon (John I. Blair) and four railroads: the DL&W, the Jersey Central (CNJ), the Morris & Essex Railroad (M&E) and the Warren Railroad. Originally, the Warren Railroad was to tie together the CNJ and the DL&W.

The purpose of building the 19-mile (31 km) Warren Railroad was to connect CNJ at Hampton, New Jersey and DL&W's mainline at the Delaware River. Expensive to build, the Warren Railroad required a large amount of excavation, three large bridges, and two tunnels. Construction started in 1853; the line opened three years later. In 1862, Oxford Tunnel (also known as Van Ness Gap Tunnel) opened, relieving trains of a slow and arduous climb over Van Ness Gap. The new tunnel, however, did not prevent the subsequent collapse of the DL&W-CNJ merger plan, which negated the building of the Warren.

The M&E quickly emerged as the logical replacement for the CNJ, as it would give the DL&W direct access to the Hudson River. The more southern route of the Warren Railroad had been chosen in anticipation of a CNJ-DL&W merger. With an M&E-DL&W merger, the Warren Railroad was no longer a straight shot between the two railroads. Instead, it became part of a circuitous route: 20 miles (32 km) of the Phillipsburg Branch (Port Morris to Washington); 14 miles (23 km) of the Warren Railroad (Washington to Delaware); and 5 miles (8 km) of the Bangor & Portland Railroad (Delaware to Slateford, Pennsylvania).^[1]

Oxford Tunnel's eastern portal, August 2011; low overhead clearances and increasing traffic forced the railroad to install gauntlet track in the tunnel, creating a bottleneck that was ultimately eliminated by the building of the Lackawanna Cut-Off

Oxford Tunnel was double-tracked in 1869, and for a few decades, suffered no more serious problems than the intermittent water (and sometimes flooding) also seen in its sister tunnel at Manunka Chunk. By the 1890s, the era's larger locomotives and rolling stock had trouble fitting through the tunnel. In 1901, the railroad installed gauntlet track in the tunnel, effectively turning it into a single-track bottleneck — another reason to build the Lackawanna Cut-Off.

The line was a patchwork of three DL&W lines: the Phillipsburg Branch (Port Morris-Washington, New Jersey, excluding the section south of Washington); the Warren Railroad (Washington-Delaware, New Jersey, excluding the Hampton Branch); and the Bangor & Portland (B&P) Branch (Delaware-Slateford). The speed limits on the sections varied: 70 mph (110 km/h) on the Phillipsburg Branch; and 50 mph (80 km/h) on the Warren Railroad and B&P.

Old Road passing beneath the Delaware River Viaduct near Slateford, Pennsylvania

With the opening of the Cut-Off in 1911, the line became known as the Old Road, relegated to a branch line for local freight shipments. It still saw the occasional through train when Cut-Off traffic was heavy and served as the main line in 1941 when a rockslide closed the Cut-Off. The effects of Hurricane Diane caused record flooding along the Delaware River and forced DL&W to reroute trains over part the Old Road. The storm also washed out the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) Bel-Del Railroad north of Belvidere, New Jersey, leading the railroad to remove the section north to the junction of the Old Road at Manunka Chunk and end PRR service from Trenton, New Jersey, to East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.

Rockport Wreck

The Old Road was the site of the DL&W's most infamous train wreck. On June 16, 1925, a passenger train carrying German-American tourists from Chicago to Hoboken was slated to run over the Cut-Off, but in order to avoid freight trains on the line the special train was diverted onto the Old Road to Port Morris.^[2] At Rockport, New Jersey, the train struck debris washed onto a road crossing by a heavy thunderstorm. The train derailed, and killed 47 passengers and three trainmen. In 1995, on the 70th anniversary of the wreck, a stone and plaque was erected at the Rockport crossing to remember the lives lost.

Decline

In April 1970, the Erie Lackawanna Railway (EL) abandoned the Delaware-Washington, New Jersey section. Conrail assumed EL operations in 1976. In 1982, NJ Transit assumed operation of the trackage between Port Morris Junction and Netcong for commuter service.

Port Morris Junction ceased to exist in 1984 when Conrail abandoned the Cut-Off. Warren County removed remaining bridges and abutments over the next several years.

Current state

This 1901 bridge at Butzzville, N.J., one of the railroad's first concrete bridges, replaced a stone bridge that could not handle increasingly heavy locomotives. It was the only DL&W bridge that crossed a river (the Paulinskill River) and another railroad (the L&HR RR) with a single arch.

Some vestiges of the Warren Railroad remain: telegraph poles, tunnels, and a concrete viaduct spanning the Pequest River and the abandoned Lehigh and Hudson River Railway right-of-way near the intersection of State Route 31 and U.S. Route 46 near Buttzville. The steel bridge across the Delaware River near Delaware, N.J., retains the eastbound track but is no longer in use.

In 1992, commuter rail service was re-established to Hackettstown by NJ Transit, although the operation west of Netcong was under trackage rights granted by Conrail and then later Norfolk Southern Railway.

In 2011, Port Morris Junction was re-established to serve the Lackawanna Cut-Off project.

References

1. Lowenthal, Larry; William T. Greenberg Jr. (1987). The Lackawanna Railroad in Northwestern New Jersey. Tri-State Railway Historical Society, Inc. pp. 10–98, 101. ISBN 978-0-9607444-2-8.
2. Historians mark 85th anniversary of Warren County's deadliest accident, a train derailment that made international headlines