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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 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 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 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: of the Phillipsburg Branch (Port Morris to Washington); of the Warren Railroad (Washington to Delaware); and of the Bangor & Portland Railroad (Delaware to Slateford, Pennsylvania). 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: on the Phillipsburg Branch; and on the Warren Railroad and B&P. 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. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Lackawanna Old Road」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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