Delaware and Hudson Railway

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Logo of the D&H

The Delaware and Hudson Railway ( D&H ) was a railway company in the northeastern United States and was once the oldest uninterrupted American railway company. It was founded in 1823 as the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company to build a canal from Honesdale, Pennsylvania to Rondout, New York on the Hudson River. This was mainly used to transport anthracite from several mines in northeastern Pennsylvania to New York .

Rail traffic as a ship feeder

From April 1826 a railway line was built between a coal mine near Carbondale (Pennsylvania) and the canal in Honesdale. The route consisted of a series of slate rope levels , which were connected with horizontal stretches, which should be used by locomotives. The company imported four steam locomotives from England in 1829, including the Stourbridge Lion . This locomotive was tested for the first time for a commercial steam locomotive operation on a railway line in the USA. However, the locomotive was too heavy for the railroad tracks, which consisted of hemlock fir beams with nailed-on metal plates. The locomotives were therefore parked after the test drive and the trains were pulled between the inclined rope levels with horses.

Starting in 1843, the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company's railway line was gradually extended westward to connect further mines, with Scranton, about 70 km from Honesdale, being the largest town in the region in 1863 . As early as 1860, in addition to freight transport - which continued to be carried out largely without locomotives using gravity in the load direction (to the canal) - modest passenger transport was also offered on the rail link.

expansion

D&H route network, status 1886

From the mid-1860s, the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company began to shift its focus from shipping to rail traffic and to expand its rail network by additional routes - in contrast to the existing, topographically and operationally limited gravity railway operated entirely with locomotives. This was not only done by building its own routes, but in particular by taking over existing railway companies and, in isolated cases, by acquiring trackage rights , rights of use for railway lines from other companies. The result was a route network that, starting from northeastern Pennsylvania, mainly extended across the north of the state of New York , but also reached Vermont and the Canadian province of Québec .

The original canal was last used in November 1891 and sold on June 13, 1899. In the same year, on April 28, 1899, the previous Delaware and Hudson Canal Company was renamed the Delaware and Hudson Company (D&H). The original gravity railway was also shut down in 1899, after a largely parallel main railway line had existed since 1870. At the end of 1912, D&H founded the Wilkes-Barre Connecting Railroad together with the Pennsylvania Railroad .

The D&H route network reached its greatest extent from 1915 to the late 1920s with a length of around 1,440 km, before some short sections of the route were abandoned for economic reasons and the D&H subsidiary Quebec, Montreal and Southern Railway sold to the Canadian National Railway in 1929 were. On April 1, 1930, the Delaware and Hudson Company was reorganized into the Delaware and Hudson Railroad, which was founded on December 1, 1928 .

Further development in the 20th century

D&H PA-1 19 with the Laurentian passenger train , 1968

In the 1930s, the anthracite transports, which until then still represented the backbone of D&H freight transport, began to decline significantly. As a reaction to this, D&H began to realign itself as Bridge Line in 1938 and to recruit more and more supra-regional transports that D&H used in transit . This strategy was successful and brought D&H significant traffic growth.

In 1968, the holding company acquired DERECO the Norfolk and Western Railway , the D & H, at the same time in Delaware and Hudson Railway was renamed. The Dereco held from 1968 to July 26, 1972 all shares of the neighboring Erie Lackawanna Railway .

The D&H was one of the few railway companies in the northeast that did not go bankrupt in the 1970s . With the establishment of the state company Conrail in 1976, the D & H received for passage ( Trackage Right ) on Conrail routes to Buffalo , Newark and Philadelphia each have Allentown as well as Washington, DC , and Alexandria . In addition, D&H was able to take over the shares in the Wilkes-Barre Connecting Railroad previously held by the PRR and Penn Central and the subsequent PRR / Penn Central route from Wilkes-Barre to Sunbury with a government loan. On March 1, 1981, D&H acquired the Binghamton - Scranton section of the former Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad from Conrail and was able to gradually shut down its own, topographically much more demanding route between Carbondale and Nineveh ( Colesville ) near Binghamton in 1982 and 1986, respectively.

D&H was taken over by Guilford Transportation on January 4, 1984 for only $ 500,000, which reflected the state of finance and infrastructure the D&H had achieved in the meantime. In order to be able to take advantage of more favorable collective agreements from the employer's point of view, the new owner tried to lease D&H to its subsidiary Springfield Terminal Railway , which was not bound by the collective agreements of larger railway companies. However, this was prohibited on December 18, 1987 by the Interstate Commerce Commission . Guilford Transportation declared D&H bankrupt on June 20, 1988. While the short Scranton – Carbondale route was acquired by Lackawanna County in 1985 and initially operated by the Lackawanna Valley Railroad (LVAL) and since 1993 by the Delaware-Lackawanna Railroad (DL), New York took over the rest of the D&H network . Susquehanna and Western Railway interim operations.

Sold to Canadian Pacific and Norfolk Southern

In 1991 the D&H was finally sold to the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), which was able to strengthen its presence in the northeast of the USA. The CPR invested large sums in the infrastructure of the D&H routes, but was initially unable to record the expected increases in traffic. From October 1996 to January 1, 2001, the former D&H was spun off into a CPR subsidiary named St. Lawrence and Hudson Railway , the sale of which was temporarily considered. However, since the beginning of the 21st century, the D&H routes have again played a larger role as part of the CPR's access to the greater New York City area.

Effective September 18, 2015, the Norfolk Southern Railway acquired the southern half of the D&H route network for $ 214.5 million from the Canadian Pacific Railway. This includes the 430 km long connection from Schenectady via Binghamton and Scranton to Sunbury as well as the branching 25.8 km long route from Delanson to Voorheesville near Albany . Norfolk Southern also retained existing usage rights on the D&H routes from Schenectady to Mechanicville and Saratoga Springs . Norfolk Southern had been using the southern part of D&H intensively since 2010 via trackage rights to reach the routes of Pan Am Southern and Pan Am Railways in New England . At the time of the takeover, about 80% of the freight was transported by Norfolk Southern.

The D&H routes from Rouses Point to Schenectady and Schenectady to Mechanicville remained with the CPR . The 1976 D&H / CPR usage rights in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, District of Columbia and Virginia were relinquished on August 4, 2015, after they had not been used for over two years.

Passenger traffic

The flagship in passenger traffic was the Laurentian , which connected Penn Station in New York City with Montreal . In addition to this day train, a night train was also offered on this connection as Montreal Limited . With the last trips on April 30, 1971, D & H's passenger traffic ended. Amtrak , founded the following day, initially decided against continuing the New York City – Montreal connection, but took it up again on August 5, 1974 as Adirondack .

Web links

Commons : Delaware and Hudson Railway  - Collection of Images, Videos, and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ William H. Brown: The history of the first locomotives in America. From original documents, and the testimony of living witnesses . Appleton and Company, New York 1871, XIII: First English Locomotives, pp. 74-78 ( link ).
  2. ^ Brian Solomon: North American Railroad Family Trees . Voyageur Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-7603-4488-0 , pp. 93 (English).
  3. ^ A b The Historical Guide to North American Railroads . Kalmbach Media, 2014, ISBN 978-0-89024-970-3 , pp. 114-115 (English).
  4. ↑ Christopher T. Bear: A General Chronology of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, its Predecessors and Successors. (PDF) The Pennsylvania Railroad Technical & Historical Society, April 2015, accessed July 3, 2020 (with reference to Trains Magazine as a source).
  5. ^ Conrail Office of Chief Engineer, D&C: Scranton & Wilkes-Barre, PA, and Vicinity; Railroads & Industries. (PDF; 4.25 MB) In: Conrail Assets Map. Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail), April 1983, accessed May 22, 2020 .
  6. ^ ICC rejects Guilford Bid to lease D&H Railway . In: The Journal of Commerce . JOC Group, December 20, 1987, ISSN  1530-7557 (English, joc.com ).
  7. ^ Edward A. Lewis: American Shortline Railway Guide (5th Edition) . Kalmbach Publishing, Co., 1996, ISBN 978-0-89024-290-2 , pp. 100 (English).
  8. ^ Norfolk Southern completes acquisition of Delaware & Hudson South Line. Norfolk Southern Corporation, September 18, 2015, accessed January 16, 2019 .
  9. ^ A b Norfolk Southern officials anticipate new business opportunities after acquiring old Delaware & Hudson route. Progressive Railroading , December 2015, accessed on January 16, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Norfolk Southern Railway Company -Acquisition and operation- Certain Rail Lines of the Delaware and Hudson Railway Company, Inc. Surface Transportation Board , May 15, 2015. Retrieved on January 16, 2019 (English).
  11. ^ Delaware and Hudson Railway Company, Inc. — Discontinuance of trackage rights exemption. Surface Transportation Board, July 2, 2015, accessed January 16, 2019 .