Lackawanna Old Road

Lackawanna Old Road
The 1902 Old Road bridge over the Delaware River near Delaware, New Jersey.
Overview
Termini	Port Morris Junction Slateford Junction
Operation
Opening	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	113 km/h (70 mph)

[ v t e ] 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 and Western Railroad (DL&W). Opened in 1856, it was for a half-century simply a part of the line connecting New Jersey and Pennsylvania. In 1911, the DL&W cut 11 miles (18 km) off the route by opening the Lackawanna Cut-Off, which split 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 Warren Railroad

The purpose of building the 19-mile (31 km) Warren Railroad was to connect the CNJ at Hampton, New Jersey and the Lackawanna's mainline at the Delaware River. The original plan would not have created the Old Road. 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 to rail traffic three years later. In 1862, Oxford Tunnel (also known as Van Ness Gap Tunnel) opened, relieving trains of a slow and arduous climb on a temporary track over Van Ness Gap. Yet the new tunnel did not prevent the subsequent collapse of the DL&W-CNJ merger plan, which shattered the premise for the building of the Warren Railroad.

The M&E quickly emerged as the logical replacement for the CNJ, as it would give the Lackawanna 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 kilometres) of the Phillipsburg Branch (Port Morris to Washington); 14 miles (23 kilometres) of the Warren Railroad (Washington to Delaware); and 5 miles (8.0 kilometres) of the Bangor & Portland Railroad (Delaware to Slateford, Pennsylvania).^[1] Worse yet, the section between the New Jersey towns of Washington and Hampton (later called the Hampton Branch) was all but useless.

Oxford Tunnel's eastern portal in 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. But 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 to Washington, NJ, excluding the part of the branch south of Washington); the Warren Railroad (Washington to Delaware, New Jersey, excluding the Hampton Branch); and the Bangor & Portland (B&P) Branch (Delaware to Slateford). The speed limits on the sections varied: 70 mph (113 km/hr) on the Phillipsburg Branch; and 50 mph (80 km/hr) on the Warren Railroad and B&P.

The Old Road

The Old Road passes beneath the Delaware River Viaduct near Slateford, PA.

With the opening of the Cut-Off in 1911, the line became known as the Old Road. No longer the mainline, it was used primarily as a branch line for local freight shipments. It still saw the occasional through train when rail traffic was heavy on the Cut-Off, and served as the main line in 1941 when a rockslide closed the Cut-Off for about a month. In 1955, Hurricane Diane's torrential rains caused record flooding along the Delaware River and forced the Lackawanna to reroute trains, such as the Phoebe Snow, over part of the Old Road. The storm also washed out the Pennsylvania Railroad's 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.

1925 Rockport Wreck

The Old Road was the site of the DLW'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 Lackawanna 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, NJ, 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.

Dismantlement

In April 1970, the Erie Lackawanna Railway abandoned virtually the entire Warren Railroad, and removed the tracks between the towns of Delaware and Washington. Conrail took over operation of the remaining active trackage 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 the Cut-Off track was removed. During the 1980s and 1990s, Warren County removed the bridges and abutments spanning roads and highways between Delaware and Washington for safety.

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