page_title: Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad
section_title: Conrail
hierarchical_section_title: Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad / History / Erie merger and aftermath (1956–present) / Conrail
caption_attribution_description: English: train at South Orange, NJ Other information scan of color slide
context_page_description: The Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad was a U.S. Class 1 railroad that connected Buffalo, New York, and Hoboken, New Jersey, a distance of about 400 miles. Incorporated in 1853, the DL&W was profitable during the first two decades of the twentieth century, but its margins were gradually hurt by declining traffic in coal and competition from trucks. In 1960, the DL&W merged with rival Erie Railroad to form the Erie Lackawanna Railroad.
context_section_description: The E-L's rail property was legally conveyed into Conrail on April 1, 1976. Initially, Conrail's freight schedule did not change much from the E-L's due to labor contracts that restricted any immediate alterations. This, too, would change. In early 1979, Conrail suspended through freight service on the Lackawanna side, citing the E-L's early-1960s severing of the Boonton Branch near Paterson, New Jersey, and the grades over the Pocono Mountains as the primary reason for removing freight traffic from the entire Hoboken-Binghamton mainline and consolidating this service within its other operating routes.
  The busy Morristown Line is the only piece of multi-track railroad on the entire 900-mile Lackawanna system that has not been reduced to fewer tracks over the years. In the 1986 photograph to the right, a set of Arrow III single units and an Arrow II married pair runs eastbound after passing the NJ Transit station in South Orange, New Jersey. The line was triple-tracked nearly a century prior, and remains so today.
  The Lackawanna Cut-Off was abandoned in 1979 and its rails were removed in 1984. The line between Slateford Junction and Scranton remained in legal limbo for nearly a decade, but was eventually purchased, with a single track left in place. The Lackawanna Cut-Off's right-of-way, on the other hand, was purchased by the state of New Jersey in 2001 from funds approved within a $40 million bond issue in 1989. (A court later set the final price at $21 million, paid to owner Gerald Turco of Kearny, New Jersey.) NJ Transit has estimated it would cost $551 million to restore service to Scranton over the Cut-Off, a price which includes the cost of new trainsets. A 7.3-mile section of the Cut-Off between Port Morris and Andover, New Jersey, which was under construction has been delayed due to environmental issues on the Andover station site; the Cut-Off between Port Morris to Andover is slated to re-open for rail passenger service no earlier than 2021.
caption: A train on the Morristown Line in South Orange, NJ. Two Arrow III singles lead an Arrow II pair.
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