The New Jersey Cut-Off (or Lackawanna Cut-Off) was a 28-mile high-speed, double-track mainline constructed by the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad between 1908-1911 and which ran from Port Morris, New Jersey to Slateford, Pennsylvania. Considered an engineering masterpiece, the Cut-Off pioneered the use of reinforced concrete on a grand scale, as well as the use of massive cutting and filling that would later become standard practice in both railroad and highway construction.

The Lackawanna Cut-Off was built to replace the Lackawanna's "Old Road", a circuitous route on an alignment significantly south of where the Cut-Off would be built; this was in anticipation of a merger with the Central Railroad of New Jersey (CNJ), a merger which never took place. As such, by the beginning of the 20th Century, the Old Road had become a operational bottleneck, with Oxford Tunnel, which had been converted to gauntlet track due to low overhead clearances, being the biggest headache. President William Truesdale, who had become president of the Lackawanna in 1899, foresaw the need for replacing the Old Road early on, and the New Jersey Cut-Off was born.

Starting about 1905, more than a dozen potential routes between Port Morris, NJ and Slateford, PA were surveyed, several of which would have required more tunneling than already existed on the Old Road. (The Cut-Off as built was not amongst the earlier surveyed alignments.) Given that an east-west route in northwest New Jersey would cross the hilly terrain at a right angle, the need for tunnels on the new route seemed inevitable, in spite of the fact that a major reason for building the new route was to eliminate the tunnels on the old route.

As planning continued, a new route--the northernmost of all the potential routes--emerged. This route would have no tunnels and would cross the valley of the Pequest River on the world's largest railroad embankment: the Pequest Fill. Indeed, the "as built" version of the Cut-Off was initially rejected as impractical due to the size of the Pequest Fill. The Cut-off would run directly from a point Slateford, Pennsylvania on the Delaware River, two miles (3.25 km) south of the Delaware Water Gap, to the crest of the watershed at Lake Hopatcong (Port Morris, New Jersey). It is 28.45 miles (45.5 km) in length, against the line which it replaced of 39.57 miles (63.3 km), saving the Lackawanna 11.12 miles (17.8 km) between the two points. This, however, was but one element of the improvement, for it reduced the maximum grade of 60.2 feet per mile (1:88 or 1%) to 29.04 feet per mile (1:182 or 0.6%). It also eliminated a total curvature of 1,560 degrees or over four complete circles and did away with the two tunnels at Oxford Furnace, New Jersey and Manunka Chunk, New Jersey, with only one very short tunnel at Roseville, New Jersey on the new line, which except for occasional ice build-up during the winter and "tripping" of the rockslide sensors in the rock cut just west of the tunnel anytime during the year, was a relatively minor impediment to operations. The speed limit through the tunnel would be 70 mph.

The Cut-off required exceptionally heavy cuts and fills totaling over 15 million cubic yards (11.8 million m³). Where it was found impossible to obtain enough material from the cuts at either end of the fills, great as they were to build these monstrous embankments, the Lackawanna Railroad was obliged to purchase outright some 760 acres (3.1 km²) of farmland for "borrow pits." The earth and gravel was scooped out to a depth of twenty feet and hauled up on the embankments, leaving in some places good-sized lakes where there was formerly level ground[citation needed]. Concrete served as the material for the construction of stations, signal towers, and the overhead highway crossings. There were no at-grade crossings on the Cut-off when it was constructed.

During the construction of the Cut-off, a suspended aerial cableway was employed in making the fills. By aid of cables and towers, movable bridges capable of supporting dump cars were constructed and when the work was in progress, presented the astonishing spectacle of a locomotive and train of cars suspended from a cable at an elevation of 100 feet (30 m) or more. At one time, ten steam shovels were at work on one fill alone, resembling work on the Panama Canal. Five million pounds (2268 metric tonnes) of dynamite were consumed in rending apart the hills[1]. During construction, several foreign governments sent their representatives on tours of inspection to the Cut-off, since it stood as the most notable example of modern railway construction from its inception.

The deepest cut on the cut-off is 130 feet (40 m) deep; the largest is 100 feet (31 m) deep and one mile (1,600 m) long, mostly through solid rock. The largest of the fills is the one across the Pequest River valley, extending westward from a point one mile east of Andover, New Jersey. It is 110 feet (34 m) in height and over three miles (4.8 km) long and was the largest railroad fill in the world at the time, with over 6.5 million cubic yards of fill needed to reach the proper grade in this area.

The Cut-Off opened to rail service on Christmas Eve, 1911. It was the last railroad mainline built in New Jersey and is arguably the most scenic route in the state as it travels through the New Jersey Highlands, high above the surrounding terrain. The opening of the Cut-Off had the immediate effect of downgrading the Old Road to secondary status. Long-distance trains, such as the Lackawanna Limited, which travelled from Hoboken, NJ to Buffalo, NY, and which provided sleeping car service onto Chicago and St. Louis, now stopped at Blairstown instead of Washington, NJ. The Cut-Off was built for speed, as no curve on the line had a speed restriction of less than 70 mph. With superelevation (lowering of the inside rail) of curves, the overall speed limit on the line was later raised to 80 mph. Although no official record exists of overspeed operations on the Cut-Off, "making up time" on the schedule when trains were late during the steam era is reported to have occurred, with speeds in excess of 100 mph having been attained on occasion. Ironically, the coming of diesel operation during the 1940s and 50s restricted the top speeds of trains to 85 - 90 mph, depending on the type of locomotive. (When freight locomotives were employed during the 1960s, top speeds dropped to 65 mph.)

At the outset, however, the Lackawanna's woman in white, Phoebe Snow, advertised the New Jersey Cut-Off in posters that showed the Pequest Fill and proclaimed the Lackawanna as the "Shortest Route" [to Buffalo]. Later, when Phoebe Snow became a streamlined train, the Cut-Off, with its wide vistas from atop its immense fills, was considered a scenic highlight of the trip to Buffalo. Although few trains stopped at Johnsonburg or Greendell, except on flag, Blairstown was considered a major stop on the railroad and virtually all of the named passenger trains, Phoebe included, stopped there. (The station at Blairstown even sold commutation tickets.) Clearly, the Cut-Off in New Jersey was a testing ground for even greater engineering feats with the Nicholson Cut-Off--mostly notably the Nicholson (or Tunkhannock) Viaduct--in Pennsylvania. The Tunkhannock Viaduct remains to this day the largest reinforced concerete structure in the world. The Pennsylvania Cut-Off, which was built 1912-1915, is still heavily used today and is owned by Canadian Pacific Railway. The story of the Cut-Off, unfortunately, is typical of American railroading in general, with the route being single-tracked in 1958 in anticipation of a merger with the Erie Railroad in 1960, forming the Erie Lackawanna Railroad. The management of the new company quickly moved most freight trains to the so-called "Erie side" from the "Lackawanna side", which meant that far fewer trains travelled over the Cut-Off. This traffic pattern remained in effect for over ten years, past the discontinuation of passenger service in January 1970, but was changed during the early 1970s when virtually all EL traffic was moved back to the Lackawanna side. This continued through the Conrail merger in 1976. However, Conrail, who was displeased with the heavy grades in New Jersey east of the Cut-Off and the Pocono grades west of the Cut-Off, discontinued all service over the Cut-Off in 1978 when this traffic was shifted over to the former Penn Central lines.

By 1979, the Cut-Off had been placed out of service, which meant that all routine maintenance on the line was discontinued. Ironically, Conrail had replaced numerous crossties on the Cut-Off in 1976, so the line was in better shape than it had been in nearly 15 years. Typically, however, placing a line out of service was the first step to abandonment. On November 13, 1979, Amtrak ran an inspection train over the line in an attempt to elicit support for Hoboken-Scranton service.[citation needed] But with no funding available, the idea faded. This would be the last passenger run on the Cut-Off during the 20th Century. From 1980-1984 various proposals were made in an attempt to purchase the line. Both Sussex and Morris Counties in New Jersey and Monroe County in Pennsylvania, together with several private entrepreneurs, pursued funding to pay for the $6.5 million price-tag that Conrail had set for the line from Port Morris to Scranton (operating costs would be separate). In the end, the Monroe County Railroad Authority would block Conrail's complete removal of the track in Pennsylvania (only one track would be removed, including the Cut-Off in Pennsylvania), but the entire trackage on the Cut-Off in New Jersey would soon be removed.

Last Updated 10/19/06

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