Lackawanna Railroad: Map, History, Viaducts, Rosters

Last revised: September 17, 2026

The Delaware, Lackawanna & Western—the Lackawanna, mark DLW, not to be confused with today’s short line Delaware-Lackawanna—was another of the Northeast’s anthracite carriers, with a history that traces to the early nineteenth century. At its height it never reached 1,000 miles, but it was a well-managed company throughout. It avoided bankruptcy from its formation in the early 1850s until the merger with the Erie more than a century later. It has been argued that had Lackawanna’s top officers been allowed to oversee the new Erie Lackawanna (1960), it would have been a much more successful operation.

The company took its official name on March 11, 1853. Trains first ran under the Lackawanna & Western on October 20, 1851. Erie Lackawanna began on October 17, 1960. The slogan was The Road Of Anthracite.

Delaware Lackawanna and Western FTs on point of a westbound freight stopped at Pocono Summit Pennsylvania May 10 1959

Delaware, Lackawanna & Western FTs on point of a westbound freight stopped at Pocono Summit, Pennsylvania, just after cresting the eastern slope of the Poconos, May 10, 1959. Ken Von Stueben photo. American-Rails.com collection.

On this page: At a glance · Liggett’s Gap · East to the Hudson · West to Buffalo · Air lines and Tunkhannock · Phoebe Snow · Hoboken and the MUs · White, Shoemaker, diesel · Erie Lackawanna · What remains

At a glance

The Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad logo. Author’s work.

Item	Detail
Railroad	Delaware, Lackawanna & Western. Mark DLW. The Road Of Anthracite
Headquarters	New York City (90 West Street). Shops and coal at Scranton
Genesis	Liggett’s Gap Railroad, April 7, 1832
First trains	Lackawanna & Western, Scranton–Great Bend, October 20, 1851
Named	Delaware, Lackawanna & Western, March 11, 1853
Dates	October 20, 1851–October 16, 1960. Erie Lackawanna October 17, 1960
Route-miles	About 950 (1950)
Gauge	6 ft, then 4 ft 8½ in from March 15, 1876
Principal lines	Hoboken–Buffalo; Morris & Essex; Lackawanna Cutoff; Scranton–Sunbury; Binghamton–Utica / Oswego / Ithaca
Last steam	1953. 0-8-0 #232, last day of steam operations
Diesels, 1960	212. Freight cars 11,719. Passenger cars 610
Successor	Erie Lackawanna
Rosters	Steam · Diesel

Dates follow Schafer, Grant, and the Hoboken Terminal page. Information compiled September 17, 2026.

Liggett’s Gap, and March 11, 1853

Most of the classic railroads of New England and the Northeast can trace their heritage back to an entity predating the industry. For the Lackawanna, Mike Schafer’s Classic American Railroads: Volume III starts with the Hoboken Ferry Company of the 1770s, once led by Colonel John C. Stevens of Revolutionary War fame. Stevens also received the first U.S. railroad charter, the New Jersey Railroad of 1815. After the DL&W was formed, the ferry sat in the Hoboken Terminal complex and carried passengers across the Hudson into Manhattan. The ferry is not the railroad’s corporate origin. The railroad is.

The two earliest railroad predecessors were the Liggett’s Gap Railroad, incorporated April 7, 1832, and the Delaware & Cobbs Gap Railroad, chartered December 4, 1850. Liggett’s Gap was envisioned to connect Slocum’s Hollow—later Scranton—to Great Bend, Pennsylvania, 56 miles. Years passed before construction. On April 14, 1851, the company took the name Lackawanna & Western. On October 20, 1851, service opened between those towns. The future DL&W treated that opening as its earliest corporate heritage.

The Lackawanna gained its official name on March 11, 1853, when the L&W merged with Delaware & Cobbs Gap. Cobbs Gap built east from Scranton to the Delaware River near what is today Delaware Water Gap. The DL&W of that era ran diagonally across Pennsylvania and enjoyed iron ore and anthracite in the Lackawanna Valley. George Scranton’s foundry at Oxford, New Jersey, took the ore; he and his brother Selden helped found the city that still bears the name. Anthracite was heating fuel until the early twentieth century, and it paid the bills.

East to the Hudson

Leadership soon wanted a port across New Jersey. It sponsored the Warren Railroad, chartered February 12, 1851, from Delaware, New Jersey, to a connection with the Central Railroad of New Jersey at Hampton. Service began May 28, 1856. The DL&W formally leased the Warren in 1857 and reached the Hudson waterfront on CNJ rails. The Lackawanna of this era was six-foot gauge. The Jersey Central, standard-gauge, laid a third rail. The DL&W relaid its network to standard gauge in a single day, March 15, 1876.

In the meantime the Morris & Essex (incorporated January 29, 1835; Newark–Orange November 19, 1836) was becoming a problem. It reached Dover by 1848 and Phillipsburg by 1860. On December 10, 1868, the Lackawanna leased the M&E, which met the Warren at Washington. Trains now ran over its own rails across New Jersey. The CNJ association ended. Later the M&E formed the Newark & Hoboken, completed in 1877, to the Hudson waterfront. There the Lackawanna built Hoboken Terminal, opened February 25, 1907, after fire destroyed the earlier facility in 1905. It still stands as an NJ Transit station. That building is the Hoboken page.

West to Buffalo

With the east largely complete, the railroad looked west. Buffalo, at the eastern tip of Lake Erie, would mean it no longer needed the rival Erie to ferry freight westward. The first extension beyond northeastern Pennsylvania came while the east was still being finished. In 1869 it bought the Syracuse, Binghamton & New York, Binghamton–Syracuse, and leased the Oswego & Syracuse the same year. In 1870 it picked up the Utica, Chenango & Susquehanna Valley north of Binghamton to Richfield Springs and Utica, another connection with the New York Central. The Greene Railroad, also 1870, linked Chenango Forks and Greene.

The last major extension, a direct line to Buffalo, was Jay Gould’s. He had lost the Erie and eyed the DL&W as a way to New York for the Wabash, which already reached Buffalo. A subsidiary, the New York, Lackawanna & Western, was chartered August 26, 1880. Gould lost his influence. The 207-mile extension he had pushed opened September 17, 1882.

The final notable piece was Scranton toward Northumberland: the Lackawanna & Bloomsburg, incorporated 1852, completed 1856, acquired 1873. Sunbury was Pennsylvania Railroad trackage rights. The whole network stretched only about 950 miles, but it was a finely tuned operation with a diverse traffic base and skilled railroaders from top to bottom. From its earliest days management instilled a philosophy of frugality that served it through the panics of 1873 and 1893 and even the Depression of 1929. The closest brush with bankruptcy came in the 1930s under John M. Davis. Before the Depression the Lackawanna was a gold-plated institution, a smaller Pennsylvania Railroad. It sometimes paid 100 percent dividends. Those perks stopped in the 1930s. The road returned to profitability in World War II.

Air lines and Tunkhannock

Success in the early twentieth century was anthracite. The railroad moved millions of tons and, before the Hepburn Act of 1906, even owned mines. The coffers paid for the improvement projects that still define the map. The original route through eastern Pennsylvania and western New Jersey was riddled with sharp curves and stiff grades. William Haynes Truesdale rebuilt it.

The New Jersey Cutoff—the Lackawanna Cutoff—launched August 1, 1908, and opened December 24, 1911, at more than $11 million. It eliminated curves, grades, and clearance problems and shortened Port Morris, New Jersey, to Slateford, Pennsylvania, by 11 miles. The new line was 28.5 miles, double-track, essentially an air line: 1,040-foot Roseville Tunnel, the 16,500-foot Pequest Fill, the 4,700-foot Armstrong Cut, and the 1,100-foot Paulins Kill Viaduct in reinforced concrete. Concrete was available along the railroad, and Truesdale used it for bridges and stations. Conrail abandoned the cutoff in 1983. New Jersey has worked since to restore pieces for commuter service.

A similar job in Pennsylvania, north of Scranton, was the Summit–Hallstead or Nicholson Cutoff, Clarks Summit to Hallstead, just over 39 miles, double-track, work from May 1912, open November 6, 1915. Both air lines had viaducts. Martins Creek and Paulins Kill are large. Tunkhannock dwarfs them: 2,375 feet long, 240 feet above the valley floor, Lackawanna R.R. across the center arch. After Conrail the Nicholson corridor went through various owners. Norfolk Southern runs it now.

Official system map of the Delaware Lackawanna and Western from 1936

An official system map of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western from 1936. Author’s collection.

Phoebe Snow

The Lackawanna was not a large railroad and did not have an expansive passenger fleet. The premier train Hoboken–Buffalo was the Phoebe Snow, which replaced the Lackawanna Limited. Phoebe had been a fictional character, created by Earnest Elmo Calkins at the turn of the century to sell clean-burning anthracite. Soft bituminous trains left soot on clothes. A woman in snow-white clothing was a hit, with the verse:

Says Phoebe Snow
About To Go
Upon A Trip To Buffalo
“My Gown Stays White
From Morn Till Night
Upon The Road Of Anthracite”

Under William White the name came back on a $3 million streamliner. Service began on the 396-mile main on November 15, 1949, maroon and gray, against the Central, the Erie, and the Lehigh Valley. The railroad hired a model. She became one of the most popular celebrities in New York. The train encyclopedia is the Phoebe Snow page. Other named trains included the Owl, Pocono Express, Twilight, New Yorker, New York Mail, Westerner, and the Interstate Express (Syracuse–Philadelphia).

Delaware Lackawanna and Western E8As at Hoboken Terminal during the 1950s

Delaware, Lackawanna & Western E8As at Hoboken Terminal during the 1950s. American-Rails.com collection. Eleven E8As, 810–820, took the Phoebe Snow and the varnish.

Hoboken and the MUs

Despite the shortcomings of the Davis years, his tenure electrified the New Jersey commuter lines and kept the company out of receivership. The board approved 67 route-miles in April 1928. The first MU passenger train left Hoboken for Montclair on September 3, 1930. Thomas Edison was on the first trip. The last steam-to-electric changeover was January 25, 1931: 3,000-volt DC catenary, General Electric, 236 trains a day. The same cars ran, essentially unchanged, for half a century. NJ Transit still uses the Hoboken–Dover, Montclair, and Gladstone map.

Lackawanna MU suburban trains stopped at the station in Dover New Jersey during the 1950s

Lackawanna MUs, suburban service, at the station in Dover, New Jersey, during the 1950s. The 1848 building was rebuilt by architect Frank J. Nies in 1901. It remains in NJ Transit use. American-Rails.com collection.

Lackawanna MUs outbound from Hoboken Terminal at Croxton, New Jersey, circa 1958. Meyer Pearlman photo. American-Rails.com collection.

White, Shoemaker, and diesel

In 1941 William White guided the Lackawanna through the war and positioned it afterward. He launched the streamlined Phoebe Snow and, in 1946, a high-speed time freight named the Pioneer. He bought formerly leased lines (savings of more than $1 million a year), modernized what he could, and took stock in the Nickel Plate to offset anthracite’s decline. The NKP holdings were sold in the 1950s as deficits grew. White left in 1952 for the New York Central presidency. Perry M. Shoemaker, vice president of operations, a Yale man and the first college graduate to run the company, finished dieselization. Last steam was 1953. The diesels are the diesel roster. Steam is the steam roster.

H. Roger Grant, in Erie Lackawanna: Death Of An American Railroad, 1938–1992, puts 1929 gross revenues at $81.7 million, cut in half in the 1930s, then back during the war. Anthracite earned $10.3 million in 1952 and barely $5 million by 1957. Commuter losses were the New York tax. In 1954 the railroad launched piggyback with the Nickel Plate. In 1957 it bought the Lackawanna & Wyoming Valley, the Laurel Line, for freight into Wilkes-Barre.

Erie Lackawanna, October 17, 1960

A merger seemed inevitable. Informal talks with the Erie began in 1954. Joint operations followed: Erie into Hoboken for commuters on October 13, 1956; Pavonia closed December 12, 1958. Shared track Binghamton–Gibson, New York, on the Erie main, 1957. Studies of Erie, DL&W, and Delaware & Hudson began September 10, 1956. The D&H dropped out April 13, 1959. The ICC approved Erie and Lackawanna on September 13, 1960. Erie Lackawanna began October 17, 3,031 miles, Jersey City/Hoboken to Chicago via Buffalo. The Lackawanna carried fifteen outstanding bonds to the Erie’s seven.

Early years were mixed. Lackawanna management was largely ignored in favor of the Erie’s. The Erie reached Chicago on a double-track main but had lived with debt and a 1938 bankruptcy. If Lackawanna officers had run EL, the argument goes, the railroad might have survived the 1960s and 1970s. Penn Central in 1968 made it worse. Hurricane Agnes in June 1972 put EL into court. The Poughkeepsie Bridge burned May 8, 1974. Chessie could not agree with the unions on lines east of Sterling, Ohio. EL went into Conrail on April 1, 1976. That story is the EL and Conrail pages. This page ends at October 16, 1960.

What remains

Much of the Lackawanna east of Binghamton still carries trains: NJ Transit on the Morris & Essex and the MUs; Norfolk Southern on the Nicholson Cutoff and parts of the Pocono main; Delaware-Lackawanna and Steamtown on the Scranton side. Hoboken Terminal is NJ Transit and PATH. The cutoff in New Jersey is a restoration project, not a Class I. The company of March 11, 1853, is not.

Sources

Schafer, Mike. Classic American Railroads: Volume III. Hoboken Ferry; Liggett’s Gap; company sketch
Grant, H. Roger. Erie Lackawanna: Death Of An American Railroad, 1938–1992. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. Revenues; merger talks; EL
Taber, Thomas Townsend, III, and Thomas Townsend Taber. The Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad in the Twentieth Century. Cutoffs; Truesdale
National Park Service / Steamtown. Last day of steam, 1953, 0-8-0 #232
NPS Historic Structures, Steamtown. MU electrification: first train September 3, 1930; last steam changeover January 25, 1931
Classic Trains. Hoboken Terminal opened February 25, 1907
American-Rails.com: Hoboken Terminal; Phoebe Snow; Erie Lackawanna; Conrail

Facebook X Pinterest Tumblr Reddit WhatsApp Messenger