The Lackawanna Cut-Off (also known as the New Jersey Cut-Off, the Hopatcong-Slateford Cut-Off or the Blairstown Cut-Off) was a rail line built by the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western (DL&W) Railroad. Constructed from 1908 to 1911, the line was part of a 400-mile (640 km) main line between Hoboken, New Jersey, and Buffalo, New York. It ran west for 28.45 miles (45.9 km) from Port Morris Junction in Roxbury Township, NJ – near the south end of Lake Hopatcong, about 45 miles (72 km) west-northwest of New York City – to Slateford Junction in Slateford, Pennsylvania, about two miles south of the Delaware Water Gap.
When it opened on December 24, 1911, the Cut-Off was considered a “super-railroad” – a state-of-the-art rail line – having been built using large cuts and fills and two large concrete viaducts, allowing what was considered high-speed travel at that time. It was 11 miles (18 km) shorter than the Lackawanna Old Road, the rail line it superseded; it had a much gentler ruling gradient (0.55% vs. 1.1%); and it had 42 fewer curves, with all but one permitting passenger train speeds of 70 mph (110 km/h) or more. It also had no railroad crossings at the time of its construction. All but one of the line’s 73 structures were built of reinforced concrete, 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, a project that was underway at the same time the Cut-Off was being built.
Operated through a subsidiary, the Lackawanna Railroad of New Jersey, the Cut-Off remained in continual operation for 68 years, through the Lackawanna’s 1960 merger with the Erie Railroad to form the Erie Lackawanna Railroad (EL), and the EL’s conveyance into Conrail in 1976. Conrail ceased operation of the Cut-Off in January 1979 and filed for abandonment of the line in 1982, ostensibly because of it having an excess of east-west routes. It removed the track in 1984, then sold the right-of-way to private developers in 1986. In 2001, the State of New Jersey acquired the right-of-way through eminent domain, and the short section in Pennsylvania was conveyed to the Monroe County Railroad Authority. A project to restore service on the east end of the Cut-Off to Andover, New Jersey, is projected to be completed in 2026, with Amtrak also expressing interest in running passenger service to Scranton, PA.
