Delaware
and Hudson Railway - (en)
The Delaware and Hudson Railway (D&H) (AAR reporting marks DH) is a
subsidiary of the Canadian Pacific Railway, giving it access to New York
City and other parts of the northeastern United States. It was formerly an
important bridge line, connecting New York with Montreal, Quebec. The
company started out as the Delaware and Hudson Canal, running from
Kingston, New York on the Hudson River southwest to Port Jervis, New York
on the Delaware River and beyond to the anthracite coal fields at
Carbondale, Pennsylvania. The canal company later built a railroad, one of
the first railroads in the United States, later known as the Delaware and
Hudson Company and then the Delaware and Hudson Railroad until 1968. The
railroad company has called itself "America's oldest continually
operated transportation company".
Delaware and Hudson Canal
The Delaware and Hudson Canal Company was chartered by separate laws in
the states of New York and Pennsylvania in 1823, allowing William Wurts
and his brother Maurice to construct the canal. The New York law, passed
April 23, 1823, incorporated "The President, Managers and Company of
the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company", and the Pennsylvania law,
passed March 13 of the same year, authorized the company "To Improve
the Navigation of the Lackawaxen River". Ground was broken on July
13, 1825, and the canal was opened to navigation in October 1828. The line
of the canal began at Rondout Creek at the location known as Creeklocks,
between Kingston (where the creek fed into the Hudson River) and Rosendale.
From there it proceeded southwest alongside Rondout Creek to Ellenville,
continuing through the valley of the Sandburg Creek, Homowack Kill, Basher
Kill and Neversink River to Port Jervis on the Delaware River. From there
the canal ran northwest on the New York side of the Delaware River,
crossing into Pennsylvania on Roebling's Delaware Aqueduct at Lackawaxen
and running on the north bank of the Lackawaxen River to Honesdale.
To get the anthracite from the Wurts' mine in the Moosic Mountains near
Carbondale to the canal at Honesdale, the canal company built a gravity
railroad. The state of Pennsylvania authorized its construction on April
8, 1826. On August 8, 1829, the D&H's first locomotive, the
Stourbridge Lion, made history as the first locomotive to run on rails in
the United States.
Westward extensions of the railroad opened to new mines at Archbald in
1843, Valley Junction in 1858, Providence in 1860 and Scranton in 1863.
Passenger service began west of Carbondale in 1860.
Delaware and Hudson Company
As railroads grew in popularity, the canal company recognized the
importance of replacing the canal with a railroad. The first step of this
was the Jefferson Railroad, a line from Carbondale north into New York,
chartered in 1864, leased by the Erie Railway in 1869 and opened in 1872.
This was a branch of the Erie Railway, running south from the main line at
Lanesboro to Carbondale. Also built as part of this line was a
continuation from the other side of the D&H's gravity railroad at
Honesdale southeast to the Erie's Pennsylvania Coal Company railroad at
Hawley. The Jefferson Railroad (and through it the Erie) obtained trackage
rights over the D&H between its two sections, and the D&H obtained
trackage rights to Lanesboro.
The other part of the main line was the Albany and Susquehanna Railroad,
which the D&H leased on February 24, 1870, and the connecting
Lackawanna and Susquehanna Railroad, chartered in 1867 and opened in 1872.
The Albany and Susquehanna provided a line from Albany southwest to
Binghamton, while the Lackawanna and Susquehanna split from that line at
Nineveh, running south to the Jefferson Railroad at Lanesboro. Also leased
in 1870 was the Schenectady and Duanesburg Railroad, connecting the Albany
and Susquehanna at Duanesburg to Schenectady, opened in 1872 (as the
Schenectady & Susquehanna Railroad until 1873).
In 1870 the Valley Railroad opened, providing a non-gravity line between
Scranton and Carbondale.
On March 1, 1871 the D&H leased the Rensselaer and Saratoga Railroad
Company, which, along with its leased lines, provided a network stretching
north from Albany and Schenectady to Saratoga Springs, and continuing
northeast to Rutland, Vermont, as well as an eastern route to Rutland via
trackage rights over the Troy and Boston Railroad west of Eagle Bridge.
The D&H also obtained a 1/4 interest in the Troy Union Railroad from
this lease.
On March 1, 1873 the D&H got the New York and Canada Railroad
chartered as a merger of the Whitehall and Plattsburgh Railroad and
Montreal and Plattsburg Railroad, which had been owned by the Rutland
Railroad. This provided an extension north from Whitehall to the border
with Quebec, completed in 1875; a branch opened in 1876 to Rouses Point.
Lines of the Grand Trunk Railway continued each of the two branches north
to Montreal.
The D&H obtained trackage rights over the Lehigh and Susquehanna
Railroad in 1886, extending the main line southwest from Scranton to
Wilkes-Barre.
On July 11, 1889 the D&H bought the Adirondack Railway, a long branch
line heading north from Saratoga Springs along the Hudson River.
The canal was last used on November 5, 1891, and the gravity railroad
closed January 3, 1899. On April 28, 1899 the name was changed to the
Delaware and Hudson Company to reflect the lack of a canal, which was sold
in June of that year. Between Port Jackson and Ellenville, the
right-of-way for the canal was used by the Ellenville and Kingston
Railroad, a branch of the New York, Ontario and Western Railway, chartered
in 1901 and opened in 1902.
In 1903 the D&H organized the Chateaugay and Lake Placid Railway as a
consolidation of the Chateaugay Railroad, Chateaugay Railway and Saranac
and Lake Placid Railway. In conjunction with the Plattsburgh and Dannemora
Railroad, which had been leased by the Chateaugay Railroad, this formed a
long branch from Plattsburgh west and south to Lake Placid.
In 1906 the D&H bought the Quebec Southern Railway and South Shore
Railway, merging them into the Quebec, Montreal and Southern Railway. This
line ran from St. Lambert, a suburb of Montreal, northeast to Fortierville,
most of the way to Quebec City. The D&H sold that line to the Canadian
National Railway in 1929.
The D&H incorporated the Napierville Junction Railway in 1906 to
continue the line north from Rouses Point to St. Constant Junction near
Montreal, Quebec, from which the D&H obtained trackage rights over the
Grand Trunk Railway to Montreal. This line opened in 1907, forming part of
the shortest route between New York City and Montreal.
In 1912 the D&H incorporated the Wilkes-Barre Connecting Railroad,
providing a straighter connection between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre,
opened in 1915.
On April 1, 1930 the property of the Delaware and Hudson Company was
transferred to the Delaware and Hudson Railroad, incorporated December 1,
1928.
In 1938 the D&H started to act as a bridge line, carrying large
amounts of freight between other connecting lines.
Delaware and Hudson Railway
In 1968 the company was reorganized as the Delaware and Hudson Railway,
and was bought by Dereco, a holding company that also owned the Norfolk
and Western Railway and Erie Lackawanna Railroad. Following the bankruptcy
of numerous northeastern U.S. railroads in the 1970s, N&W abandoned
Dereco and EL was placed in the federal government's nascent Consolidated
Rail Corporation (Conrail), while D&H was again made an independent
railroad. The creation of Conrail also saw D&H receive trackage rights
over large parts of the Conrail system, which allowed D&H to operate
as far south as Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., using former Delaware,
Lackawanna and Western Railroad and Lehigh Valley Railroad trackage.
In 1984, Guilford Rail System purchased the D&H as part of a plan to
operate a larger regional railroad from Maine and New Brunswick in the
east, to New York and the Midwest in the west, Montreal in the north, and
the Philadelphia/Washington DC area in the south. For only $500,000,
Guilford purchased the entire railroad, lock, stock and barrel. The price
tag reflects the horrid financial shape and the condition of the physical
plant. At the time of the purchase, the D&H was basically a disaster
area with little freight traffic and relying on Federal and State money to
keep operating. By 1986, the original mainline (the Penn Division that ran
under Erie's Starrucca Viaduct) was abandoned north of Carbondale,
Pennsylvania, and the parallel ex-DL&W main was acquired between
Binghamton and Scranton. Plans for expanded service did not come to
fruition and Guilford declared the D&H bankrupt in 1988, abandoning
its operation. Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, purchased the line south
of Carbondale to Scranton and services a growing number of industries in
the valley under the auspices of designated-operator Delaware-Lackawanna
Railroad.
With the D&H in limbo, the federal government appointed the New York,
Susquehanna and Western Railway to operate the D&H under subsidy until
such time as a buyer could be found. Guilford claimed that the D&H had
assets of $70M at the time of the bankruptcy. In 1991, the Canadian
Pacific Railway purchased the D&H to give the transcontinental system
a connection between Montreal and the New York City metropolitan area.
Under CPR, the D&H trackage was upgraded significantly, although for a
time, the D&H was again in limbo as CPR placed it and other
money-losing trackage in the eastern U.S. and Canada into a separate
operating company named St. Lawrence and Hudson Railway between 1996 and
2000. SL&H was merged back into CPR in recent years and the D&H
connection to New York City is starting to prove its worth. In late 1997,
former Canadian Pacific President and CEO Rob Ritchie referred to the
D&H as having potential as being an "extremely valuable network
feeder".[citation needed] The D&H is, and has been, a difficult
money-making venture for some time. Constructed as a coal hauling route,
when that business declined it proved difficult to turn a profit. It
operates in some of the most rural areas of New York State, and what few
industrial customers it had in the Albany and Binghamton areas are long
gone. Currently, the future is looking probably the best that the D&H
has seen in a very long time. Along with the NYC connection, haulage
agreements with other railroads are greatly increasing traffic. Recently,
CP has started using their new high horsepower AC traction locomotives on
the line, instead of their aging SD40-2 models. This is an indication of
the increasing importance of reliable service. There are also major signal
and track projects underway to modernize the D&H, suggesting that the
future is bright for what is said to be America's Oldest Continuously
Operated Transportation Company.
Nicknamed "The Bridge Line to New England," or just "The
Bridge Line," the D&H has several unique spots in North American
railroading history:
A loyal customer of American Locomotive Company, as D&H served Alco's
Schenectady, New York headquarters. D&H took part in the development
of roller bearing side-rods and high pressure water tube boilers. It was
also one of the early railroads to adopt 4-8-4 Northern locomotives for
passenger trains, and 4-6-6-4 Challenger locomotives for freight trains.
During the diesel era, the D&H became famous for its operation of 4
ex-Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway ALCO PA locomotives for its
passenger trains, which were painted in the classic D&H blue and
grey/silver with a yellow stripe. The railroad applied the same paint
scheme to two Baldwin RF-16 locomotives it acquired from the Monongahela
Railway in August, 1974.
