Delaware River
The Delaware River is a major river on the Atlantic coast of the United States. It drains an area of 14,119 square miles in five U. S. states: Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania. Rising in two branches in New York state's Catskill Mountains, the river flows 419 miles into Delaware Bay where its waters enter the Atlantic Ocean near Cape May in New Jersey and Cape Henlopen in Delaware. Not including Delaware Bay, the river's length including its two branches is 388 miles; the Delaware River is one of nineteen "Great Waters" recognized by the America's Great Waters Coalition. The Delaware River rises in two main branches that descend from the western flank of the Catskill Mountains in New York; the West Branch begins near Mount Jefferson in the Town of Jefferson in Schoharie County. The river's East Branch begins at Grand Gorge near Roxbury in Delaware County; these two branches flow west and merge near Hancock in Delaware County, the combined waters flow as the Delaware River south. Through its course, the Delaware River forms the boundaries between Pennsylvania and New York, the entire boundary between New Jersey and Pennsylvania, most of the boundary between Delaware and New Jersey.
The river meets tide-water at the junction of Morrisville and Trenton, New Jersey, at the Falls of the Delaware. The river's navigable, tidal section served as a conduit for shipping and transportation that aided the development of the industrial cities of Trenton and Philadelphia; the mean freshwater discharge of the Delaware River into the estuary of Delaware Bay is 11,550 cubic feet per second. Before the arrival of European settlers, the river was the homeland of the Lenape Native Americans, they called the river Lenapewihittuk, or Lenape River, Kithanne, meaning the largest river in this part of the country. In 1609, the river was first visited by a Dutch East India Company expedition led by Henry Hudson. Hudson, an English navigator, was hired to find a western route to Cathay, but his discoveries set the stage for Dutch colonization of North America in the 17th century. Early Dutch and Swedish settlements were established along the lower section of river and Delaware Bay. Both colonial powers called the river the South River, compared to the Hudson River, known as the North River.
After the English expelled the Dutch and took control of the New Netherland colony in 1664, the river was renamed Delaware after Sir Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, an English nobleman and the Virginia colony's first royal governor who defended the colony during the First Anglo-Powhatan War. The Delaware River is named in honor of Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, an English nobleman and the Virginia colony's first royal governor who defended the colony during the First Anglo-Powhatan War. Lord de la Warr waged a punitive campaign to subdue the Powhatan after they had killed the colony's council president, John Ratcliffe, attacked the colony's fledgling settlements. Lord de la Warr arrived with 150 soldiers in time to prevent colony's original settlers at Jamestown from giving up and returning to England and is credited with saving the Virginia colony; the name of barony is pronounced as in the current spelling form "Delaware" and is thought to derive from French de la Guerre. It has been reported that the river and bay received the name "Delaware" after English forces under Richard Nicolls expelled the Dutch and took control of the New Netherland colony in 1664.
However, the river and bay were known by the name Delaware as early as 1641. The state of Delaware was part of the William Penn's Pennsylvania colony. In 1682, the Duke of York granted Penn's request for access to the sea and leased him the territory along the western shore of Delaware Bay which became known as the "Lower Counties on the Delaware." In 1704, these three lower counties were given political autonomy to form a separate provincial assembly, but shared its provincial governor with Pennsylvania until the two colonies separated on June 15, 1776 and remained separate as states after the establishment of the United States. The name became used as a collective name for the Lenape, a Native American people who inhabited an area of the basins of the Susquehanna River, Delaware River, lower Hudson River in the northeastern United States at the time of European settlement; as a result of disruption following the French & Indian War, American Revolutionary War and Indian removals from the eastern United States, the name "Delaware" has been spread with the Lenape's diaspora to municipalities and other geographical features in the American Midwest and Canada.
The Delaware River's drainage basin has an area of 14,119 square miles and encompasses 42 counties and 838 municipalities in five U. S. states—New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware. This total area constitutes 0.4% of the land mass in the United States. In 2001, the watershed was 18% agricultural land, 14% developed land, 68% forested land. There are 216 tributary streams and creeks—an estimated 14,057 miles of streams and creeks—in the watershed. While the watershed is home to 4.17 million people according to the 2000 Federal Census, these bodies of water provide drinking water to 17 million people—roughly 6% of the population of the United States. The waters of the Delaware River's basin are used to sustain "fishing, power, cooling and other industrial and residential purposes." It is the 33rd largest river in the United States in terms of flow, but the nation's most used rivers in daily volume of tonnage. The average annual flow rate of the Delaware is 11,700 cubic feet per s
Scranton station (Central Railroad of New Jersey)
The Central Railroad of New Jersey Freight Station in Scranton, United States, was the western terminus of the Central Railroad of New Jersey line, 192 miles from its base of operations in Jersey City, New Jersey. It is located on West Lackawanna Avenue over the Lackawanna River from downtown Scranton, near Steamtown National Historic Site. Built in 1891 in a Romanesque Revival style, it was at first an unusual instance of a freight terminal being more visually striking than its corresponding passenger terminal; when the railroad shut down its Pennsylvania operations in 1972 during bankruptcy proceedings, the terminal was closed by the Lehigh Valley Railroad, which took them over, has remained unused since that time. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. Wilson Brothers & Company List of stations on the Central Railroad of New Jersey Media related to Central Railroad of New Jersey Freight Station at Wikimedia Commons
High Bridge station
High Bridge is a railway station in High Bridge, Hunterdon County, New Jersey, United States. The station is the rush hour western terminus of the New Jersey Transit's Raritan Valley Line. All off-peak trains terminate at Raritan station in Somerset County; the next station eastward is Annandale. The parking lot for the station is located one block to the west; the station only uses the southern track for outbound trains. The former Central Railroad of New Jersey station house, constructed in 1913, is used for storage and there is a covered waiting area under the building canopy; this station has limited no weekend service. The railroad, the moniker of High Bridge, was constructed in 1852 through the valley. Despite causing a boom to a local iron works, the railroad did not establish a station in the area until 1856; until 1983, Raritan Valley service continued westward to New Jersey. Limited service and low ridership led NJ Transit to discontinue all service west of High Bridge. Since service ended, there have been repeated calls for resumption of daily service.
The station has a single low-level asphalt side platform. There is an asphalt walkway over the station track providing access to the outer track; the Central Railroad of New Jersey constructed an extension of the former Elizabeth and Somerville Railroad from Clinton in 1852. In order to complete the railroad, it required traversing the Raritan River valley; this was problematic for the planners, who decided that a high bridge was the route to go in constructing the line. The railroad constructed a new bridge, 1,300 feet long, 120 feet high above the Raritan River; the bridge involved eight massive piers of 100 feet stone. The construction of the bridge cost $200,000. Construction of the railroad through the valley in 1852 did not involve a station at the current site. Despite no station, the railroad influenced a renaissance of industry in the area; the railroad construction caused the iron works in the area, run by Lewis Taylor, to gain new business. The iron works, which closed in 1783 due to lack of transportation and access, reopened in 1851.
With the railroad, Taylor added new furnaces in 1852 and 1854, as well as new items in 1853 and 1856. With the 1856 expansion of the Taylor-Wharton Iron Works, the village in the area expanded, with a railroad station opened at the location. Taylor himself, opened a company store not far from the new station. However, the high bridge through the area did not last long. In 1852, the railroad discovered; the bridge swayed. With the train on top, it would depress the track and make it rise as the equipment crossed the structure; when the railroad decided what to do about the unsafe bridge, they first considered an all-stone structure. That was turned down in favor of filling in the bridge. Construction on the new fill began in 1859. Progress began with the large stone piers and the bridge being filled in by dirt; the cost of filling in the bridge cost $500,000, covering about $60,000 worth of railroad. Filling in two of the bridge's arches cost $80,000 alone. Sidney Dillon, a local contractor, brought one of the first steam shovels in the region to the area to finish the job.
The bridge was filled in by 1865. Bernhart, Benjamin L.. Historic Journeys By Rail: Central Railroad of New Jersey Stations, Structures & Marine Equipment. Outer Station Project. ISBN 1891402072. Snell, James P.. History of Hunterdon and Somerset Counties, New Jersey: With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers. Everts and Peck. World.nycsubway.org - NJT Raritan Line Bridge Street entrance from Google Maps Street View
Lehigh Line (Norfolk Southern)
The Lehigh Line is a railroad line in central New Jersey and northeastern Pennsylvania. It is operated by the Norfolk Southern Railway; the line runs west from the vicinity of the Port of New York and New Jersey (via Conrail's Lehigh Line to the Susquehanna River valley at the south end of the Wyoming Valley Coal Region. Administratively it is part of Norfolk Southern's Harrisburg Division and is part of the Crescent Corridor; as of 2016 the line is freight-only, although there are perennial proposals to restore passenger service over all or part of the line. The Lehigh Line hosts twenty-five trains per day; the line runs from Port Reading Junction in Manville, New Jersey to Penn Haven Junction in Lehigh Township, Carbon County, Pennsylvania. At Port Reading Junction it meets the Trenton Subdivision, it crosses the Delaware River at New Jersey. Most of the traffic along the line consists of intermodal and general merchandise trains going to yards such as Oak Island Yard in Newark and Croxton Yard in Jersey City.
The line makes notable connections with other Norfolk Southern lines such as the Reading Line, the Washington Secondary, the Cement Secondary, the Ashmore Secondary, the Portland Secondary and the Stroudsburg Secondary. It connects with regional and short line railroads such as the Reading Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad, the Black River and Western Railroad and the Belvidere and Delaware River Railway; the majority of the line was once the main line of the Lehigh Valley Railroad. The first segment, between Easton and Allentown, opened in September 1855. Extensions and corporate acquisitions would carry to the Lehigh Valley main line to Buffalo, New York to the west and Perth Amboy, New Jersey to the east; some portions of the line were constructed by the Susquehanna Railroad. Conceived as a competitor to the Lehigh Valley, the L&S constructed a parallel line on the north side of the Lehigh River; the line was soon leased by the Central Railroad of New Jersey. Passenger service ended on the Lehigh Valley in 1961.
The Lehigh Valley assumed the lease of the L&S from the CNJ in 1972 when the latter abandoned operations in Pennsylvania. Both the Lehigh Valley and CNJ were merged into Conrail in 1976. Conrail named it the Lehigh Line. Conrail combined the Bethlehem–Allentown portion of the Lehigh Valley main line with the ex-Reading Company Reading Line. In the 1980s Conrail abandoned the ex-Lehigh Valley bridge over the Delaware River at Phillipsburg in favor of the L&S/CNJ bridge. With the line integrating former Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad owned CNJ Pennsylvania leased main line trackage into both its original route and into its route between Allentown and Lehighton, Conrail integrated other CNJ trackage around Phillipsburg into the line and have both the line's LV trackage in Phillipsburg and the line's new CNJ trackage in Phillipsburg be part of the line at the same time; the Norfolk Southern acquired the Lehigh Line in 1999 in the Conrail split with CSX Transportation. The section from Manville, New Jersey to Newark, New Jersey was spun off into Conrail Shared Assets Operations Lehigh Line, allowing for equal competition between Norfolk Southern and CSX.
The Delaware, Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad Company incorporated on April 21, 1846. Funding problems delayed the company's growth, it was not until late 1852 that the company, under newly appointed chief engineer Robert H. Sayre, surveyed the route between Mauch Chunk and Easton; the company changed its name to the Lehigh Valley Railroad on January 7, 1853. The line opened between Easton and Allentown, Pennsylvania on June 11, 1855, west to Mauch Chunk on September 12. At Easton, the Lehigh Valley constructed an unusual double-decker bridge across the Delaware River to Phillipsburg, New Jersey; the upper level proceeded straight across for a connection with the Central Railroad of New Jersey and Morris Canal, while the lower level curved south to meet the Belvidere Delaware Railroad. This bridge enabled the Lehigh Valley to interchange coal for both the New York City and Philadelphia markets, respectively; the upper level opened on September 7. The length of the line from Mauch Chunk to Easton which included the line's original route was 46 miles of single track.
The line was laid with a rail weighing 56 pounds per yard supported: upon cross ties 6 x 7 inches and 7-1/2 feet long placed 2 feet apart and about a quarter of it was ballasted with stone or gravel. The line had a descending or level grade from Mauch Chunk to Easton and with the exception of the curve at Mauch Chunk had no curve of less than 700 feet radius; the 1860s saw an expansion of the LV and the line with an expansion northward to the Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania area and up the Susquehanna River to the New York state line. In 1864, the LV began merging them with its system; the first acquisitions were the Beaver Meadow Railroad and Coal Company which included a few hundred acres of coal land and the Penn Haven and White Haven Railroad. The purchase of the Penn Haven and White Haven was the first step in expanding to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. To reach Wilkes-Barre, the LV began constructing an extension from White Haven, Pennsylvani
Prairie School
Prairie School is a late 19th- and early 20th-century architectural style, most common to the Midwestern United States. The style is marked by horizontal lines, flat or hipped roofs with broad overhanging eaves, windows grouped in horizontal bands, integration with the landscape, solid construction and discipline in the use of ornament. Horizontal lines were thought to evoke and relate to the wide, treeless expanses of America's native prairie landscape; the Prairie School was an attempt at developing an indigenous North American style of architecture in symphony with the ideals and design aesthetics of the Arts and Crafts Movement, with which it shared an embrace of handcrafting and craftsman guilds as an antidote to the dehumanizing effects of mass production. The term Prairie School was not used by practitioners of the style. Architect Marion Mahony, for example, preferred the phrase The Chicago Group, its term was coined by H. Allen Brooks, one of the first architectural historians to write extensively about the movement and its work.
The Prairie School developed in symphony with the ideals and design aesthetics of the Arts and Crafts Movement begun in the late 19th century in England by John Ruskin, William Morris, others. Along with the kindred American Craftsman movement it shared an embrace of handcrafting and craftsman guilds as a reaction against the new assembly line mass production manufacturing techniques, felt to create inferior products and dehumanize workers; the Prairie School was an attempt at developing an indigenous North American style of architecture that did not share design elements and aesthetic vocabulary with earlier styles of European classical architecture. Many talented and ambitious young architects had been attracted by building opportunities stemming from the Great Chicago Fire of 1871; the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 was supposed to be a heralding of the city of Chicago's rebirth. But many of the young Midwestern architects of what would become the Prairie School were offended by the Greek and Roman classicism of nearly every building erected for the fair.
In reaction, they sought to create new work in and around Chicago that would display a uniquely modern and authentically American style, which came to be called Prairie. The designation Prairie is due to the dominant horizontality of the majority of Prairie style buildings, which echoes the wide, treeless expanses of the mid-Western United States; the most famous proponent of the style, Frank Lloyd Wright, promoted an idea of "organic architecture", the primary tenet of, that a structure should look as if it grew from the site. In the words of Wright, buildings that appeared as if they were "married to the ground." Wright felt that a horizontal orientation was a distinctly American design motif, in that the younger country had much more open, undeveloped land than found in most older and urbanized European nations. The Prairie School is associated with a generation of architects employed or influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright or Louis Sullivan, though not including Sullivan himself. While the style originated in Chicago, some Prairie School architects spread its influence well beyond the Midwest.
A partial list of Prairie School architects includes: Prairie School houses are characterized by open floor plans, horizontal lines, indigenous materials. These were related to the American Arts and Crafts movement and its emphasis on hand craftsmanship and function. Both were alternatives to the then-dominant Classical Revival Style of Greek forms with occasional Roman influences; some firms, such as Purcell & Elmslie, which accepted the honest presence of machine worked surfaces, consciously rejected the term "Arts and Crafts" for their work. The Prairie School was heavily influenced by the Idealistic Romantics who believed better homes would create better people, the Transcendentalist philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson. In turn, Prairie School architects influenced subsequent architectural idioms the less is more ethos of Minimalists and form following function in Bauhaus, itself a mixture of De Stijl grid-based design and Constructist emphasis on the structure itself and its building materials.
Architectural historians have debated the reasons why the Prairie School went out of favor by the mid-1920s. In her autobiography, Prairie School architect Marion Mahony suggests: The enthusiastic and able young men as proved in their work were doubtless as influential in the office as were these early ones but Wright's early concentration on publicity and his claims that everybody was his disciple had a deadening influence on the Chicago group and only after a quarter of a century do we find creative architecture conspicuously evident in the United States. An example of BYE Prairie School architecture is the aptly named "The Prairie School", a private day school in Racine, designed by Taliesin Associates, located adjacent to Wright's Wingspread Conference Center. Mahony's and Griffin's work in Australia and India, notably the collection of homes at Castlecrag, New South Wales, are fine examples of how the Prairie School spread far from its Chicago roots. Isabel Roberts' Veterans' Memorial Library in St. Cloud, Florida, is another.
The House at 8 Berkley Drive at Lockport, New York was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009. The Oak Circle Historic District is a historic district in Wilmette, United States, it consists of fifteen single-family homes representative of the Prairie School and Craftsman styles of architecture constructed between 1917 and 1929. The Oak Circle Historic District was added to
Conrail
Conrail was the primary Class I railroad in the Northeastern United States between 1976 and 1999. The trade name Conrail is a portmanteau based on the company's legal name, while it no longer operates trains it continues to do business as an asset management and network services provider in three Shared Assets Areas that were excluded from the division of its operations during its acquisition by CSX Corporation and the Norfolk Southern Railway; the Federal Government created Conrail to take over the potentially-profitable lines of multiple bankrupt carriers, including the Penn Central Transportation Company and Erie Lackawanna Railway. After railroad regulations were lifted by the 4R Act and the Staggers Act, Conrail began to turn a profit in the 1980s and was privatized in 1987; the two remaining Class I railroads in the East, CSX Transportation and the Norfolk Southern Railway, agreed in 1997 to acquire the system and split it into two roughly-equal parts, returning rail freight competition to the Northeast by undoing the 1968 merger of the Pennsylvania Railroad and New York Central Railroad that created Penn Central.
Following approval by the Surface Transportation Board, CSX and NS took control in August 1998, on June 1, 1999 began operating their respective portions of Conrail. The old company remains a jointly-owned subsidiary, with CSX and NS owning 42 percent and 58 percent of its stock, corresponding to how much of Conrail's assets they acquired; each parent, has an equal voting interest. The primary asset retained by Conrail is ownership of the three Shared Assets Areas in New Jersey and Detroit. Both CSX and NS have the right to serve all shippers in these areas, paying Conrail for the cost of maintaining and improving trackage, they make use of Conrail to perform switching and terminal services within the areas, but not as a common carrier, since contracts are signed between shippers and CSX or NS. Conrail retains various support facilities including maintenance-of-way and training, as well as a 51 percent share in the Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad. In the years leading to 1973, the freight railroad system of the United States was collapsing.
Although government-funded Amtrak took over intercity passenger services in 1971, railroad companies continued to lose money due to extensive government regulations and excessive labor cost, competition from other transportation modes, declining industrial business, other factors. Its largest Eastern railroad, the Penn Central Railroad, had declared bankruptcy in 1970, after less than three years of existence. Formed in 1968 by the merger of the New York Central Railroad and Pennsylvania Railroad, the PC was created with no plans to merge the varied corporate cultures, the resulting company was a hopelessly entangled mess. At its lowest point, PC was losing over $1 million a day and trains were becoming lost all over the railroad. In 1972, Hurricane Agnes damaged the rundown Northeast railway network and threatened the solvency of other railroads, including the somewhat more solvent Erie Lackawanna. In mid-1973, officials with the bankrupt Penn Central threatened to liquidate and cease operations by year's end if they did not receive government aid by October 1.
This threat to US freight and passenger traffic galvanized the Congress to create a bill to nationalize the bankrupt railroads. The Association of American Railroads, which opposed nationalization, submitted an alternate proposal for a government-funded private company. Judge Fullam forced the Penn Central to operate into 1974, when, on January 2, after threatening a veto, President Richard Nixon signed the Regional Rail Reorganization Act of 1973 into law; the "3R Act," as it was called, provided interim funding to the bankrupt railroads and defined a new Consolidated Rail Corporation under the Association of American Railroads' plan. The 3R Act formed the United States Railway Association, another government corporation, taking over the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission with respect to allowing the bankrupt railroads to abandon unprofitable lines; the USRA was incorporated February 1, 1974, Edward G. Jordan, an insurance executive from California, was named president on March 18 by Nixon.
Arthur D. Lewis of Eastern Air Lines was appointed chairman April 30, the remainder of the board was named May 30 and sworn in July 11. Under the 3R Act, the USRA was to create a "Final System Plan" to decide which lines should be included in the new Consolidated Rail Corporation. Unlike most railroad consolidations, only the designated lines were to be taken over. Other lines would be sold to Amtrak, various state governments, transportation agencies, solvent railroads; the few remaining lines were to remain with the old companies along with all abandoned lines, many stations, all non-rail related properties, thus converting most of the old companies into solvent property holding companies. The plan was unveiled July 26, 1975, consisting of lines from Penn Central and six other companies—the Ann Arbor Railroad, Erie Lackawanna Railway, Lehigh Valley Railroad, Reading Company, Central Railroad of New Jersey and Lehigh and Hudson River Railway. Controlled railroads and jointly owned railroads such as Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines and the Raritan River Railroad were included.
It was approved by Congress on November 9, on February 5, 1976 President Gerald Ford signed the Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Refor
Erie Lackawanna Railway
The Erie Lackawanna Railway, known as the Erie Lackawanna Railroad until 1968, was formed from the 1960 merger of the Erie Railroad and the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad. The official motto of the line was "The Friendly Service Route". Like many railroads in the northeast financially vulnerable from the expanding U. S. Interstate Highway System, the line was weakened fiscally by the extent and record flood levels due to Hurricane Agnes in 1972, it would never recover, most of the corporation's holdings were subsumed into the federal rescue purchases creating Conrail in 1976, ending its days as an operating railroad company. The Interstate Commerce Commission approved the merger on September 13, 1960, on October 17 the Erie Railroad and Delaware and Western Railroad merged to form the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad; the EL struggled for most of the 16 years. The two railroads that created it were losing passengers, freight traffic and money; these two historic lines, the Erie and the DL&W, started to consolidate facilities on the Hudson River waterfront and across southern New York State in 1956, four years before formal corporate merger.
The Lackawanna route was affected by the decline of anthracite and cement traffic from Pennsylvania by the 1940s. The Erie was burdened by the continuing loss of high-tariff fruit and vegetable traffic from the western states into the New York City region as highways improved in the 1950s. Both lines were affected by the opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway in 1959, which allowed ocean-going cargo ships to travel between European and South American ports and cities on the Great Lakes, such as Buffalo, Detroit, Chicago, etc; the DL&W had carried much traffic to and from ocean ships, having its own port facilities at Hoboken Terminal on the Hudson River. The northeast's railroads, including the EL, were all beginning to decline because of over-regulation, subsidized highway and waterway competition, commuter operations, market saturation; the closure in the 1960s of old multi-story factories in the eastern cities, followed by the decline of the domestic automobile and steel industry in the 1970s, eroded much of the EL's traditional traffic base.
Due to government regulation policy formulated in the late 19th century, the EL and other railroads could not abandon long-distance passenger runs, despite the fact that competition from airlines, bus lines and the private automobile made them unprofitable. However, the EL did post profits in the mid and late 1960s through heavy cost-cutting, equipment modernization, suburban industrial development, increased piggy-back trailer traffic, steady reduction of long-distance passenger train service, which ended on January 6, 1970. Additional rail traffic was temporarily diverted to the EL because of service problems on the troubled Penn Central lines, which the EL paralleled; the EL built a state of the art diesel engine repair facility in Marion and upgraded a large car repair shop in Meadville, Pennsylvania. As to its money-losing suburban passenger train services in the New York City metropolitan region, the EL had come to terms with the state of New Jersey during the late 1960s for adequate subsidy and for the purchase of new engines and coaches.
The EL gained a lucrative contract with United Parcel Service in 1970, which led to the operation of five dedicated intermodal trains daily between New Jersey and Chicago. The Erie Lackawanna Railway was formed March 1, 1968, as a subsidiary of Dereco, the holding company of the Norfolk and Western Railway, which had bought the railroad. On April 1, the assets were transferred as a condition of the proposed but never consummated merger between the N&W and Chesapeake and Ohio Railway. Dereco owned the Delaware & Hudson Railway at the time. In 1972, Hurricane Agnes destroyed many miles of track and related assets in southwestern New York State; the main line between Hornell and Binghamton was abandoned as not worth the high cost of rebuilding it. The cost of what repairs were done, the loss of revenue, forced the company into bankruptcy, filing for reorganization under Section 77 of the Federal Bankruptcy Act on June 26; the completion of the Interstate 80 highway across Pennsylvania and New Jersey by 1971 added to the Erie Lackawanna's financial problems, as it diverted piggyback traffic garnered from less than truckload shipping companies such as Navajo and Cooper-Jarrett.
On the flip-side, EL was able to land large contracts with UPS because of its ability to move piggyback traffic between Chicago and Metro New York more reliably, although not faster than Penn Central. For example, in 1971, the Penn Central advertised a 24 and 1/2 hour piggyback service from Metro New York to Metro Chicago in the Official Guide of the Railways, while the EL's Employees Timetable Number 3, New York Division, showed its fastest comparable schedule to be 28 hours and 45 minutes. By 1973, the Penn Central's fastest piggyback service between these points was shown in the Official Guide to be 26 hours and 15 minutes, while the EL's Employees Timetable Number 4 showed that the EL's fastest comparable schedule was 29 and 1/2 hours. After its 1972 bankruptcy, EL management attempted to plot an independent course, anticipating financial reorganization without a heavy debt burden. Therefore, it declined interest in joining the Consolidated Rail Corporation takeover of the other major bankrupt eastern lines.
The prelimi
