Lackawanna Cutoff

Considered a “super-railroad” when it opened in 1911, the Lackawanna Cut-Off was the last railroad mainline built in the State of New Jersey. Running 28.5 miles from the tip of Lake Hopatcong (Port Morris Jct.) to the Delaware Water Gap (Slateford Jct.) in Pennsylvania, the Cut-Off was built as a bypass, as it cut off 11 miles from an older, circuitous route that dated from the 1850s. The new route, which took 41 months to build, pioneered the use of reinforced concrete and was considered state-of-the-art.  

The line was initially operated by the Lackawanna Railroad as part of its 400-mile mainline from Hoboken, NJ to Buffalo, NY. It had three passenger stations on it: Blairstown, Johnsonburg, and Greendell. Although the official speed limit on the line was eventually set at 80 mph, trains were known to exceed that on occasion. With changes in the railroad industry during the 1940s and 1950s, the Lackawanna was forced to merge with the Erie Railroad in 1960, forming the Erie Lackawanna Railroad (EL). The EL discontinued passenger service over the Cut-Off in 1970. Conrail took over the EL’s freight operation over the Cut-Off in 1976, but discontinued that in late-1978. Fearing impending abandonment, advocates convinced Amtrak to run a special train over the line on November 13, 1979. To no avail, Conrail abandoned the Cut-Off in 1982 and after a protracted political battle to try to save the line, involving both NJ and PA, the tracks were removed in 1984. But that’s not the end of the story.                                                  

In 1989, NJ voters approved a $25 million bond issue that was used by the State of New Jersey to acquire the Cut-Off in 2001. In 2011, NJ Transit began construction of the 7.3-mile section between Port Morris and Andover. Due to environmental issues, since resolved, work on the Andover section of the Cut-Off was delayed until it restarted in 2022, with service projected to begin in 2027. Meanwhile, Amtrak is currently investigating the extension of its service over the Cut-Off to Scranton, PA.