Lackawanna Cutoff Passenger Service Restoration

If you go back to the last years of the E-L, the cutoff was about dead anyway. Before the CNJ pool trains ES-99 and SE-98, and re-routing from the old Erie side, the cutoff was sparsely used. They met a lot of resistance form towns along the Boonton line when they decided to re-route their freights. Conrail kept freight on for a short while because they did not want to jump into drastic changes their first couple of years. I don't think there were many trains on the cutoff in Conrail days either.

CNJ Fan 4evr wrote:This thread is pointless anyway. It is all an episode of Fantasy Island.The cutoff was killed by Conrail.They ordered it dead and thus it was so.Remember, at the time, Conrail was still controlled by the US Govt. and they were slashing anything that was not needed,regardless of what railfans thought.There was no money in it. PERIOD! Nothing has changed. Commuter trains cost taxpayers A LOT of money. Read about what sped up the demise of our beloved pre-Conrail railroads. COMMUTER trains !!
Talk of reviving this line has been going on for at least 25 years that I know of. What have we seen? A couple miles of track laid to house out of service units on.
Given the current budget of NJT and The State Of New Jersey, don't look for anything for another 25 years(if you're lucky). It's no better "across the river". Pennsy doesn't even have a balanced budget yet. So any dreams of this line hosting ALP45 DPs with bi-levels is just that .......a DREAM.

You asked the question about equipment clearances. If your only reason for asking an honest-seeming question was to set a bear trap so you could vent the contents of your spleen into a desk fan for a larf at the forum's expense...poor form, buddy.

Matt Johnson wrote:They could certainly meet clearance requirements by running HO scale freight trains though.

Wow. A joke. It's been a while since I've seen one of those in here. Heck, I'll even throw you a chuckle.

Yes, many a freight engine are too tall for Summit. Back in the day when the H-02 out of Dover would service the Gladstone, sometimes they would need to modify a horn on an engine they got to fit through there since the location of the horn on the engine caused clearance issues. Other times, they would trade engines with the Morristown and Erie.

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:

CNJ Fan 4evr wrote:This thread is pointless anyway. It is all an episode of Fantasy Island.The cutoff was killed by Conrail.They ordered it dead and thus it was so.Remember, at the time, Conrail was still controlled by the US Govt. and they were slashing anything that was not needed,regardless of what railfans thought.There was no money in it. PERIOD! Nothing has changed. Commuter trains cost taxpayers A LOT of money. Read about what sped up the demise of our beloved pre-Conrail railroads. COMMUTER trains !!
Talk of reviving this line has been going on for at least 25 years that I know of. What have we seen? A couple miles of track laid to house out of service units on.
Given the current budget of NJT and The State Of New Jersey, don't look for anything for another 25 years(if you're lucky). It's no better "across the river". Pennsy doesn't even have a balanced budget yet. So any dreams of this line hosting ALP45 DPs with bi-levels is just that .......a DREAM.

You asked the question about equipment clearances. If your only reason for asking an honest-seeming question was to set a bear trap so you could vent the contents of your spleen into a desk fan for a larf at the forum's expense...poor form, buddy.

NO. Someone who doesn't know didley about the history of the M&E made a post that is just ridiculous in the first place.The M&E was not a through freight route under the DL&W or EL,so WHY would you think they would run freight on it now? Who in their right mind would think you could run freight into the tubes anyway? Some people need to get off Fantasy Island and join reality. Besides Tattoo screamed ""The plane !!! The plane!!!" not "The train !! The train !!"

CNJ Fan 4evr wrote:If you go back to the last years of the E-L, the cutoff was about dead anyway. Before the CNJ pool trains ES-99 and SE-98, and re-routing from the old Erie side, the cutoff was sparsely used. They met a lot of resistance form towns along the Boonton line when they decided to re-route their freights. Conrail kept freight on for a short while because they did not want to jump into drastic changes their first couple of years. I don't think there were many trains on the cutoff in Conrail days either.

I want to correct myself. Prior to 1972, only 2 trains used the cutoff, unless there was a wreck on the Erie side. They re-routed most trains over the Boonton line and cutoff until Conrail. That included the CNJ pool jobs. Some hot shots used the Erie side to avoid the commuter traffic. Check out" Lackawanna Facilities Dover To Scranton." for a detailed story.

There were a number of EL freight trains that regularly ran via the Cutoff in the 1970s. Some symbol freights even alternated. EL employees on another list say that even trains with traffic for Ford at Mahwah sometimes ran on the Lackawanna side (the Cutoff). Going back to the Lackawanna era, the Boonton Branch was always the freight route west from northern New Jersey. Building what was called the Boonton Low-Grade Line was one of the first things the DL&W did after acquiring the old Morris & Essex in 1868. The line was completed and in service by 1870. I don't like to use Wikipedia as a reference but this time I'll make an exception. Link And don't forget, in the EL era there was plenty of commuter train interference on the Erie side too.

There were problems with both routes. The Lackawanna side had grades west of the Cutoff and some trains required helpers. The Erie side required an extra brakeman west of Suffern because of NY State full crew laws. The Lackawanna side had more online industry. The Erie side west of Port Jervis had many curves and a grade (Gulf Summit) that also required some trains get helpers. Towards the end EL did not want to maintain two routes and didn't have enough money to do so anyway.

There was a fairly well-documented effort by a private group to buy the Cutoff from Conrail in the late 1970s or early 1980s in order to run an intermodal service. The intermodal terminal would have been located near Port Morris. It's a long story but I think the bottom line is, it failed because the group could not get enough financing. Investors thought the chances of the service being profitable enough to pay back the investment was too questionable.

Yes, the MnE is at capacity now with all of the NJT trains it runs plus the Morristown and Erie heading back and forth between Kearny and Morristown. Having a through freight train on the line would not do well, unless it ran at night.... even with that, I seriously doubt it would happen except in the case of an emergency or re-route.

There really is no easy place to run it to even if it ran at night.

You would either have to route it over the freight connector by the Corridor, rebuild the Kingsland Cutoff to get the right alignment or even more difficult, route it over a reopened Rahway Valley.

Well, they could go to/from Croxton by way of the Bergen/Main Lines, through Secaucus, then through the West End eye to the MnE, but that's s bit ridiculous... although local freights do this to gain access to Harrison.

Yeah, that'd be ridiculous.

Great Notch is totally out?

What if they did the Port Morris proposal today?

rr503 wrote:Great Notch is totally out?

Montclair would have a s*** fit if there was any type of regular through freight service on that line.

It was a huge mistake not to take the Federal Government's offer of maintaining one track through Totowa and Paterson on the Boonton Line.

Myra, they would. But, NA retains the rights to the ROW on the New York and Greenwood Lake tracks through Benson Street, Arlington, and into the Secaucus area, just in case if one day it would be needed.

Excuse my ignorance, but what is NA? Did you mean NS?

Sorry, you're correct... NS it should have said. No ignorance on your part, only mine.

Ah, I see! Don't worry! I doubt NS will ever need the cutoff, they already have 2 routes in/out of NJ, (one of which is unused(by them)) so they have oodles of capacity within which they could grow.. In theory could they sell the trackage rights?