The Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad built the 28 mile long New Jersey Cutoff between 1908 and 1911. It was, and is, a civil engineering marvel. The Cutoff required 14,000,000 cubic yards of cuts and 15,000,000 of fills including the 2.5 mile long 110 foot high Pequest Fill. The Cutoff was built to replace a tortuous section of the old Lackawanna Main Line with many sharp curves, steep grades, and two flood prone, undersized tunnels dating from the 1850's.
At the time the Cutoff was built, the Lackawanna was one of the richest corporations in the US. This wealth came from anthracite coal, the primary source of domestic and industrial fuel in the northeast. The Lackawanna owned large deposits of it in the Scranton, Pa. area, the mines and breakers to produce it, and the railroad it moved on. The Cutoff cost $11 million, and was built to last for ages. It was abandoned in less than 75 years.
Beginning in the 1930's anthracite use declined, and with it the Lackawanna's fortunes. The 1960 merger with the Erie eliminated the interchange traffic at Port Morris. The Lackawanna's primary freight route to New York was sold to make way for Interstate 80 in the 1960's, making connections to the Cutoff more difficult. When Conrail was formed from the remains of six bankrupt eastern railroads, it chose to use the former Lehigh Valley Railroad's line to Scranton. Conrail officially abandoned the Cutoff, and most the Lackawanna Main Line to Scranton in 1979.
The Cutoff now belongs to New Jersey Transit. NJT purchased it to thwart a contractor from purchasing the Cutoff to quarry the 15 million cubic yards of first class rock fill. With New York City's outer suburbs now reaching into this part of New Jersey and even Pennsylvania, NJT envisions restoring the Cutoff for passenger service sometime in the future.
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One of the two massive concrete viaducts on the line, The Delaware River Viaduct in a photo taken from RT. 611 in Slateford, Pa. The western end of the Cutoff is at the other end of town at Slateford Junction. |
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The Paulins Kill Viaduct in Hainsburg, NJ is the larger of the two viaducts at over 1100 feet long and 125 feet high. It is a massively beautiful structure. The rails were still in place in the Spring of 1981. |
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The view west from the top of the Paulins Kill Viaduct toward a massive fill, October 1980. |
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The view of the Delaware Water Gap from the top of the Paulins Kill Viaduct. Imagine viewing this scene from the Tavern Lounge Observation car of the Lackawanna's streamliner Phoebe Snow at 80 mph, highball in hand. |
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The Vails Cut in November of 1992. I managed to climb up to the roadbed of the narrow gauge railroad used in the construction of this cut to take this photo. The roadbed was halfway to the top. This should give you some impression of the cut's depth. |
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The Tower, Station, and Signal Bridge at Greendell, NJ looking west, November, 1992. All of the structures on the cutoff were built of steel reinforced concrete. |
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The west portal of the Roseville Tunnel in November, 1992. This 1000 foot long tunnel was not in the original plan. But after excavating 50 feet of material at this location, the work crews encountered a strata of brittle decomposed rock that was not stable enough to support the walls of the massive cut. It was promptly decided that a tunnel was the only option, it was build with little added expense and no completion time delay. |
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The east portal of the Roseville Tunnel in November, 1992. The original excavation on the cut can be clearly seen in this view. |
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The Eastern end of the Cutoff facing west at Port Morris, NJ in the Fall of 1982. I am standing on the track of the cutoff (single tracked in the 1960's). Port Morris Yard is to the left. The roundhouse and engine facility are behind the trees in the center of the picture. |
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The Port Morris, NJ Tower from the middle of Port Morris Yard in the Fall of 1982. Before the 1960 merger with the Erie, Port Morris was a very busy place handling New England bound interchange traffic with the Lehigh and Hudson River Ry. |
Although most traffic was diverted to the Cutoff in 1911, the Old Main Line lingered for years, finally being abandoned by the Erie Lackawanna in 1970.
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The 1904 Delaware River Bridge in the winter of 1980. |
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The west portal of the Manunka Chunk Tunnel, south of Delaware, New Jersey in the spring of 1981. Visible from Rt. 46, this is the site of an interchange between the Pennsylvania Railroad's Bel-Del line and the Lackawanna. |
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The east portal of the Manunka Chunk Tunnel in the spring of 1981. This picture shows one of the Lackawanna's operational nightmares. The cut leading to this tunnel cut across the course of a small creek. The creek was diverted into a timber flume down to track level, then under the tracks in an iron pipe, and then into a ditch along the roadbed. But, the whole area was very prone to flooding. Remnants of the flume were visible when this picture was taken. |