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From: "Tupaczewski, Paul R (Paul)" paultup AT lucent DOT com
Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2001 08:13:19 -0400
Subject: RE: (erielack) Erie/DL&W track consolidations
"pre-el.gif" - image/gif, 69456 bytes, 517x574+0+0 (256c)

Actually, there were other reasons for the consolidation as well. The
*biggest* considerations were mutually exclusive, but the solution to either
problem helped to solve the other!

Pete mentioned the line through downtown Passaic, but around the same time,
the Federal Government was constructing Interstate 80 across northern New
Jersey, and the DL&W Boonton Line stood right in its was around Paterson.
Sooo.... The DL&W was going to come out around Garrett Mountain in Paterson,
going all the way to the east edge of Little Falls (including the
oft-photographed "Paterson High Bridge")

There was little duplication between the merged competitors, actually. The
only parts to be abandoned in the consolidation was the Erie Main Line
between the Passaic River and the City of Passaic itself, and the DL&W
Boonton Line between South Paterson and Little Falls - all told, less than
10 miles of trackage. What undoubtedly threw people off is that the south
end of the DL&W Boonton Line now became the south end of the new EL Main
Line, and the south end of the Erie Greenwood Lake Branch became the south
end of the new EL Boonton Line.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so I quickly sketched up a map of the
lines before and after consolidation (both are attached).

"pre-el.gif" shows the lines (roughly!) before the consolidation. GREEN is
the Erie Greenwood Lake Branch, YELLOW is the Erie Main Line, ORANGE is the
DL&W Boonton Line, and BLUE is the Erie Bergen County Line. Note the
proximity of the DL&W Boonton Line to the Erie Main Line in Paterson!

"post-EL.gif" shows the effects of consolidation. Same colors are used here
(I kept GREEN for the north end of the Greenwood Lake branch that was served
into the mid-1960s), with one exception: BLACK shows the abandoned trackage.
The left black line is the original DL&W Boonton Line, the right black line
is the Erie Main Line.

Hopefully these images will clear up a lot!

- Paul



> The rationale for combining the Lackawanna Boonton Line and
> the Erie mainline and Greenwood Lake was to minimize
> duplicate service among the now merged competitors as well as
> to remove the Erie trackage through downtown Passaic.
> Commuter service on the Greenwood Lake west of Mountain View
> continued until October 1966, some 3 and a half years after
> the Passaic trackage was removed and freight service
> continued into the 1970's.



pre-el.gif

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