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The Next Station Will be Vol 7 Erie Port Jervis Susquehanna Scranton
The Next Station Will be Vol 7 Erie Port Jervis Susquehanna Scranton An Album of photographs of Railroad depots in 1910 Railroadians of America 1982
First ground was broken for the New York & Erie Railroad at sunrise on November 7, 1835, near Deposit, New York on what became the Deaware Division between Port Jervis, N.Y., and Susquehanna, Pa.
The first locomotive on the division was the "Piermont." It was dismantled at Piermont, N.Y., loaded on a canal boat, taken up the Hudson River to Rondout and thence by the Delaware and Hudson Canal to Lackawaxen, Pa. There it was set up and used to distribute iron and ties to lay the t racks on the Delaware Division in 1848. William Van De Graff was the locomotive engineer.
One of the most difficult construction jobs encountered on the line was at the Randolph hills summit beyond Deposit. A vast wall of rock had to be penetrated. It was a half mile in width with the left wall 200 feet high. It cost $200,000 to cut through and then the passage was only wide enough for one track. Years after, when the cut was widened to make room for a second track, a steady strong current of air swept through it creating an unusually cool temperature on the hottest day. In winter snow blockades were frequent.
The valley of the Starrucca Creek was the next difficulty. Surveyors found a sudden, deep and wide depression in the hills a hundred feet or more below the lowest elevation for the road bed. The valley was more than a quarter mile wide with no way around it.
After much deliberation as to method, crossing the valley by viaduct was decided upon, but three different contractors failed to meet the requirements and gave up the works. It was left to James P. Kirkwood, an engineer from the Boston & Albany R.R. to be presented with the problem. He said that the viaduct could be built on time provided there was no objection to cost. He was hired and by May, 1848, he had 800 men working at the quarries and viaduct site.
Operations were pushed to the point that the viaduct was ready long before it was needed. This wonder of engineering is 1,200 feet long, 110 feet high and has 18 arches with spans of 50 feet each. It is 30 feet wide on the top. The total cost was $320,000. For his reward, Kirkwood was made General Superintendent of the railroad in 1849.
The difficulties encountered in building the Delaware Division can be noted in the 253 curves within 104 miles of track. The end result was almost pure main line. No map is needed to explain the division's complexities. There was no room for yards or industry that would make them necessary.
Most railroads named their curves but left the tangent tracks in anonymity. Likewise, on most of the Erie's divisions; but on the Delaware Division it was the tangents that were named, such as "Nobody's" near Narrowsburg.
The first train over the completed division was a test train, December 22, 1848, consisting of an engine, a passenger car and two flat cars. At Lackawaxen the "Piermont" locomotive was added.
In spite of a three day delay due to sections of track still being laid and a heavy snowfall, the train passed safely over the division and arrived at "end of track" in Binghamton, N.Y. December 27, 1848.
Sixty two years later, when J.E. Bailey took the pictures in this volumn, the Delaware Division was part of a larger Erie railroad system extending from New York to Buffalo, Cleveland and Chicago with first class trains serving an area of 2,400 miles in the states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Illinois.
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