Roadgeek Adam wrote:I never got the theory that NYS&W really liked using the Wilkes Barre and Eastern, but that's why besides Stroudsburg & Kingston, nothing was really that impressive.
If you can find Volume 1, number 1 and 2 of the NJ Midland RHS' Midlander publication the article by Jim Guthrie on the WB&E really lays it out. Bob Mohowski's book on the NYS&W covers some of this as well. Here is a real quick overview:
When the NYS&W opened the WB&E, Susquehanna Connecting and the various branches they were really the last railroad to reach the region. They attracted the business of a lot of the independent coal operators with lower rates. They could offer those lower rates because the NYS&W was a compact operation. Other than the Hanford Branch the line was pretty much an efficient conveyor belt running from the coal mines straight to the Hudson River and hundreds of thousands of customers right on the other shore. Sure the WB&E had some tough grades, but who cared since they were hauling empty hoppers uphill? There was also a pretty profitable ice business as well. J.P. Morgan in particular saw the NYS&W as a serious threat to the Erie ever being a profitable operation as he was counting on coal that was being diverted to the NYS&W. The NYS&W was even trying to take over the then independent Erie & Wyoming RR (later the Erie's Wyoming Division). Had that happened the Erie would only be able to reach the coal via the north via Carbondale.
Once the Erie (Morgan) gained control of the NYS&W the WB&E was downgrade to essentially a branch and the coal was routed onto the Erie such that a coal shipment from a point on the SC RR going to say Sparta, NJ would be routed over the Erie to Passaic Jct. and then back west!
What little people today know or think about the WB&E is from this later obscure branchline era. For a few brief years (1893-1898) it was a serious extremely profitable coal route.