L&NE and NYS&W interchange freight

Does anyone have an idea of what the interchange patterns were between the Susquehanna and the L&NE at Hainesburg? Did the L&NE deliver coal that went east on the NYS&W? Was any westbound bridge traffic turned over to the L&NE and if so, where was it forwarded too? Thanks in advance for any help.

I don't have types of interchange, but a L&NE document I have says that 8894 cars were interchanged with the NYS&W at Hainesburg Jct. in 1959. This represented a little over 5% of the L&NE's total interchange that year.

I would be curious to know what if any interchange there was at Sussex before the Hanford Branch was abandoned in 1958.

Here's the bigger question for me: Why didn't the L&NE and the Susquehanna MERGE??

With a deepwater port in New York harbor, the cement plants (and earlier, the anthracite collieries) served by L&NE could ship their product worldwide. Over eighteen miles of the L&NE main was trackage rights over a track that essentially went nowhere on its own. Just consolidate! I've never understood how the original NYS&W ever survived. Their tracks barely went anywhere.

The NYS&W survived because they owned a tunnel in Weehawken, New Jersey that the New York Central's West Shore Line needed.

Over eighteen miles of the L&NE main was trackage rights over a track that essentially went nowhere on its own.

Not quite nowhere. At one time the NYS&W crossed the Delaware River over its own bridge and continued on to Wilkes-Barre, Pa. via its subsidiary, the Wilkes-Barre & Eastern. Anthracite for the New York City area was big business, but the NYS&W got into it too late in the game. The Pennsylvania trackage was first abandoned while the NYS&W still serviced Columbia, N.J., but the L&NE overhead traffic was what kept that portion of the NYS&W alive.

The interchange point at the western end of the NYS&W section enabled the NYS&W to get just a little bit more revenue from their portion of the car's travels. Actually, if the car was destined to go from the L&NE to the NYS&W, even if the L&NE handled the car between Hainesburg Jct. and Swartswood Jct., the NYS&W would still be entitled to its full share of the revenue, but then the L&NE would have a claim for doing the handling, and then the bookkeeping gets a whole bunch more complicated. For the bean counters, Hainesburg Jct. was easier to deal with.

Statkowski wrote:Anthracite for the New York City area was big business, but the NYS&W got into it too late in the game.

I disagree. The NYS&W was just in time. It's Wilkes Barre & Eastern, Susquehanna Connecting, and several isolated branches were fairly straight forward with out the branches and other distractions its competitors had. Essentially a direct line from the coal to Edgewater and then less than a mile to rich retail customers on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

The Erie was not too happy that this upstart could grab a large hunk of the business at a fraction of the cost compared to the larger systems. That's while J.P. Morgan bought up the NYS&W stock and leased it to the Erie. Early in the 20th century, the Erie diverted most of the coal traffic away from the WB&E. By the time of the NYS&W's bankruptcy in the late 1930's, there wasn't anything left on the WB&E to keep it open. In fact, before an independent trustee was named for the Susquehanna (Walter Kidde), the Erie managers thought that the entire NYS&W should just be abandoned.

Statkowski wrote:The NYS&W survived because they owned a tunnel in Weehawken, New Jersey that the New York Central's West Shore Line needed.

So...trackage rights through the tunnel kept the whole company afloat? Doesn't make sense. And after the WB&E was abandoned, what other traffic was on the line to the Delaware River to merit the line's purpose through all those years? As far as I know - and enlighten us if I'm wrong - the LNE interchange was the only sizable traffic that could support the line's reason to exist. So again, I don't understand why the two companies wouldn't just simplify the matter and merge into one system.

Statkowski wrote:The NYS&W survived because they owned a tunnel in Weehawken, New Jersey that the New York Central's West Shore Line needed.

Weehawken????
They had/have a tunnel in Fairview/Edgewater.....but when did NYS&W ever have anything in Weehawken???

You're correct. One is more or less next to the other, but I said the wrong one. Sorry 'bout that.

Anyway, once the L&NE went belly up, about the only thing holding up the NYS&W was the tunnel. And once they dropped passenger service (the Butler Day Express was always a fun train to ride), they didn't lose as much money annually.