With the main line severed at Port Morris Junction, the special train detoured through Port Morris Yard, ran over Port Morris Wye, and then rolled onto the Cut-Off. Dubbed the "Pocono Mountain Special", the train left Hoboken and ran west on the Morristown Line on November 13, 1979, reaching Port Morris shortly after 9 a.m. In November 1979, Amtrak operated an inspection train between Hoboken and Scranton to investigate intercity rail service between the two cities. (Conrail officials later said they might not have abandoned the Scranton Route, including the Cut-Off, if the EL had not severed a section of the Boonton Branch near Paterson, New Jersey, in the early 1960s for the construction of Interstate 80.) Early preservation efforts (1979–86) Įfforts to preserve the Cut-Off began almost immediately upon the route's closing. But the conveyance of EL into Conrail on April 1, 1976, gave Conrail excess east–west trackage, and service on the Cut-Off ended in January 1979. After May 8, 1974, freight traffic was revived on the line after the closure of a key junction with the Penn Central in Maybrook, New York, caused by fire damage to the ex-New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Poughkeepsie Bridge. The railroad's flagship passenger train, the Phoebe Snow, traveled via the Cut-Off until it was discontinued in November 1966, and the last regularly scheduled passenger train (the Lake Cities) ran over the line on January 5-6, 1970. The EL initially shifted most freight traffic away from the Cut-Off, though it continued to run passenger trains over the line. Although the DL&W was profitable during its corporate life, competition from trucks and other economic pressures after World War II forced it to merge with competitor Erie Railroad to form the Erie Lackawanna Railroad (EL) in 1960. The line was considered an engineering marvel-a "super-railroad", in the vernacular of the day-with deep cuts, tall fills, and two large viaducts that allowed a mostly straight route through the mountains of the state's northwest region. Built between 19 by the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad (DL&W) to speed service between Hoboken, New Jersey, and Buffalo, New York, the 28.45-mile (45.79 km) Lackawanna Cut-Off was the last main line built in New Jersey.
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