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The Lackawanna Cut-Off (also known as the New Jersey Cut-Off or Hopatcong-Slateford Cut-Off) is a railroad line that was built by the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad (DL&W) between 1908 and 1911. Noted for its large cuts and fills, and two large concrete viaducts, the line was part of a main line between Hoboken, New Jersey, and Buffalo, New York. The Cut-Off ran west for 28.5 miles (45.9 kms) from Port Morris Junction — near the south end of Lake Hopatcong in New Jersey, about west-northwest of New York City — to Slateford Junction near the Delaware Water Gap in Pennsylvania. The Cut-Off was shorter than the Lackawanna Old Road, the rail line it superseded; it had a much better grade profile (0.55% vs. 1.1%); and it had 42 fewer curves, with all but one permitting passenger train speeds of or more.〔 The Cut-Off also had no railroad crossings at the time of its construction. All 73 structures on the line were constructed of reinforced concrete, which was considered a pioneering use of the material. The construction of the roadbed required the movement of millions of tons of fill material using techniques similar to those used on the Panama Canal. The Cut-Off was built and operated by the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad under the subsidiary company Lackawanna Railroad of New Jersey, which was merged into the DL&W proper after all its stock was retired in 1941. The Cut-Off continued to be operated by the Lackawanna Railroad until October 17, 1960, when the DL&W merged with the Erie Railroad. The resulting Erie Lackawanna Railroad (EL) operated the line until April 1, 1976, when the EL was conveyed into Conrail, which continued to operated the Cut-Off until January 1979. The Cut-Off was abandoned in 1983 and the track was removed the following year. In 1985, Conrail sold the right-of-way to two private developers from New Jersey. In 2001, the respective sections in the two states were acquired by the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) and the Pennsylvania Northeast Regional Railroad Authority (PNERRA). In 2011, after a nearly three-decade effort to reactivate the line, NJ Transit began construction from Port Morris Junction to Andover, New Jersey (Andover station), a total of , under the Lackawanna Cut-Off Restoration Project. By the Spring of 2012, NJ Transit had laid about four miles (6.5 km) of track, in three disconnected sections. Since that time, construction has been halted due to unresolved environmental issues. In 2013, NJ Transit began using a short section of the Cut-Off near Port Morris to temporarily store retired rail equipment. In 2015, NJ Transit announced that it expected to resume construction in October 2016, with a projected start date of rail service to Andover in October 2018. Although no specific plans have yet to be announced regarding the restoration of service west of Andover, a federal study has examined the feasibility of an extension into northeastern Pennsylvania, possibly as far as Scranton.〔NEW JERSEY – PENNSYLVANIA LACKAWANNA CUT-OFF PASSENGER RAIL SERVICE RESTORATION PROJECT ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT Prepared by: U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Transit Administration and NEW JERSEY TRANSIT in Cooperation with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, June 2008.〕 ==History (1851–1905)== The line's origins involve two titans of American railroading: John I. Blair and William Truesdale. Blair built the DL&W's Warren Railroad, chartered in 1851 and completed in 1862, to provide a straight connection between the mainlines of the DL&W in Pennsylvania and the Central Railroad of New Jersey (CNJ).〔The six-foot-gauge Warren Railroad ran from the junction with the CNJ at Hampton, New Jersey, through Washington and Oxford, and connected with the DL&W at the Delaware River near Delaware, New Jersey, and Portland, Pennsylvania.〕 But when the Lackawanna-CNJ merger fell through and the Lackawanna merged with the Morris & Essex Railroad in New Jersey instead, the Warren Railroad became part of a circuitous patchwork of rail lines connecting two unanticipated merger partners.〔 The route (later known as the "Old Road" after the New Jersey Cut-Off opened) had numerous curves that restricted trains to and two tunnels with speed limits of just . The twin-bore tunnel near Manunka Chunk, and its eastern approach were often flooded by heavy rains. The single-bore Oxford Tunnel was double-tracked in 1869 to reduce the bottleneck. In 1901, gauntlet track was installed through Oxford Tunnel, providing more overhead and sideways clearance as rolling stock grew in size; however, the newly overlapping tracks decreased operating capacity through the tunnel, and the bottleneck worsened.〔〔 Truesdale became DL&W president on March 2, 1899,〔 with a mandate to rebuild the entire railroad, including a new line to replace the Warren Railroad route.〔 He would focus on smaller projects for several years, but by 1905 the railroad was gearing up for its largest project up until that time, with teams surveying replacement routes westward from Port Morris, New Jersey, to the Delaware River. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Lackawanna Cut-Off」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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