I'm told that eating crow is an acquired taste and word on the street is that there are several hyper active posters hereon that have become world class at it!!

Don't have any solid proof, but my sources are highly reliable!!

Best regards, Ross Rowland

As Mr. Rowland reminds us, there are often more than one ox owner in a bi-state route who might not want to be gored by passing up potential revenue. Scranton isn't in New Jersey, either, and Lackawana County wants visitors.

"I'm told that eating crow is an acquired taste and word on the street is that there are several hyper active posters hereon that have become world class at it!!"

Any preparations of crow should be served with appropriate decorations. Yellow ribbons, for example.

Oh, my, oh, my, I didn't use this before, but I just couldn't resist this time. . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuStsFW4EmQ

Perfect!!!

Ross Rowland

Here's my favorite youtube videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0vSRI1-xnQ


Everybody says its real, we just don't have a carcass.

Getting back on topic, it's interesting to note that, as part of the rebuilding of the Port Morris yard and the Montclair-Boonton Line back into Port Morris Junction, they are completely rebuilding the entire wye track instead of just the switch onto the Cut-Off. Unless the eventual commuter service is to start in Hackettstown, run to Scranton, and then to Hoboken, I see no reason, at this point, for the wye to be rebuilt. If steam was to run from Scranton to Port Morris at least, there would be a means of turning the engine around for the run back to Scranton.

Speaking of steam on the Cutoff, did Nickel Plate 759 use it to go from Hoboken to Scranton on October 11th, 1969, or did 759's train take a different route?

759 ran the cutoff that day. I was on that trip; I think the "Old Road" had been severed by then.

Howard P.

I wasn't aware the Old Road was ever severed, especially since NS still uses it today

I meant the Old Road route in New Jersey; I'm much better qualified east of the Hudson River, so I may be wrong. But all the EL HICo trips went via the Cutoff.Howard P.

The Old Road refers to the original Lackawanna main before the Cutoff was opened in 1912. It ran through Port Morris, Hackettstown, Washington, Oxford, Manunka Chunk, and Delaware (where it crossed the river), Portland and Slateford Junction. I lived in Washington until the mid '60s, and remember seeing an excursion train, with mixed DL&W and Erie equipment, go through town. (Also ex Erie BLW road switchers, and DL&W Trainmasters, as well as the usual DL&W Fs and RSs-)

I'm not too clear on the history but I believe a problem with either the Oxford or Manunka Chunk tunnel doomed the line as a through route. There really wasn't too much local business west of Washington anyway, save an occasional car of iron ore for Alan Wood Steel off a short branch at Oxford.

One of the two bores of the Manunka Chunk was abandoned fairly early (I think the 1940's?). The next blow was that the PRR abandoned its Bel-Del Branch north of Belvidere to the interchange with the DL&W at Manunka Chunk as a result of the damage done by Hurricane Diane in 1955. While the remaining bore was a maintenance headache, it was washouts between the west end of that tunnel and Delaware that finally closed the Old Road as a through route, some time in the late 1960's (68 or 69 I think). After that a local still went through Oxford Tunnel to reach a couple of customers at Bridgeville (just east of Manunka Chunk). After they stopped using rail the line was cut back to the former American Can plant just north of Washington, where it still ends today. On the west end the track remained in service to a point just east of Delaware. During the late EL years this track was used on occasion during peak traffic times to stage covered hoppers going to ConAgra in Martins Creek on the Bangor and Portland Branch. This track lingered during the early Conrail years with increasingly rare moves while drilling the Portland power plant. Everything on the Jersey side of the bridge finally got torn up in the late 1980's when the rail bridge over Route 46 was removed and the land regraded. Rail still remains on the Delaware River bridge itself. I have seen an NS locomotive sneak part way onto the bridge although not in a couple of years.

Getting back to the Lackawanna Cutoff: while I think we might be a decade or more away from the line being rebuilt, we at the Erie Lackawanna Dining Car Preservation Society would like to field our recreation of either the Lake Cities or the Phoebe Snow from Scranton to Hoboken. What better historic recreation than the original cars operating over their original route?

Not to drag this thread too far astray, but what was the last steam through Washington, on the Old Road? My best guess was the 148, deadheading between Morristown and Bethlehem, via the P'burg branch and LV main, back in October, 1975. Anything since? I was on those moves, and got to see my old house from the window of a Stillwell. I think Howard P. made that move as well?

EDM
Miss That Engine, NJ

My money would be on either #425 or #2102 of Blue Mountain & Reading steam fleet on ferry moves to and from Hoboken.

Rob