The Delaware and Hudson Railway (D&H) is a Class 1 railroad that operates in the Northeastern United States. In 1991, after 168 years as an independent railroad, the D&H was purchased by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CP). The Delaware & Hudson is a wholly owned subsidiary of CP, which would itself become part of Canadian Pacific Kansas City in 2023. CPKC operates the D&H under its Soo Line Corporation subsidiary, which also operates Soo Line Railroad.
D&H's name originates from the 1823 New York state corporation charter listing "The President, Managers and Company of the Delaware & Hudson Canal Co." authorizing an establishment of "water communication" between the Delaware River and the Hudson River.
Nicknamed "The Bridge Line to New England and Canada," the D&H connected New York with Montreal and New England. The Delaware & Hudson has also been coined as "North America's oldest continually operated transportation company." In 2023, the D&H turned 200 years old.
On September 19, 2015, the Norfolk Southern Railway completed its acquisition of the "D&H South Line", which is 282 miles (454 kilometers) long, and connects Schenectady, New York, to Sunbury, Pennsylvania.Norfolk Southern completes acquisition of Delaware & Hudson South Line, PRNewswire, September 18, 2015. The D&H South Line consists of three rail lines, the Sunbury Line, the Freight Line, and the Voorheesville Runner (former Albany & Susquehanna Railroad Mainline between Delanson and Voorheesville, NY). The Nicholson Cutoff is located on the Sunbury Line, which was the former mainline of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad.
History By the 1790s, industrializing eastern population centers were having increasing troubles getting charcoal to fuel their growing kilns, smithies, and foundries. As local timber was denuded, efforts to find an alternative energy source began. During a fuel shortage in Philadelphia during the War of 1812, an employee at the direction of industrialist Josiah White conducted a series of experiments and discovered a number of ways that anthracite coal could be successfully ignited and burned. The fuel had been seen more as a way to put out a fire than a fuel to build one up, so its use also had to overcome prejudice."In the year 1806, William Turnbull had an ark constructed at the mouth of the Nesquehoning Creek which took to Philadelphia about three hundred bushels of coal. A portion of this cargo was sold to the managers of the water works, located in Center Square, where the city hall now stands. [i.e. 1884] Upon trial there, it was deemed rather an extinguisher of fire than anything else, was rejected as worthless, and was broken up to be spread on the walks of the fake surrounding garden in place of gravel." (Brenckman, pp. 76-79)
White and his partner Erskine Hazard founded the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company, creating the Lehigh Canal, and inspiring the exploitation of anthracite deposits found by William Wurts in and around Carbondale, Pennsylvania, which led to the development of Scranton.
By 1824, the mills of White and Hazard, and the regular large boatloads of anthracite they proved they could supply, tipped the prejudice against anthracite in PhiladelphiaBrenckman (1884), History of Carbon County, general discussions point. when the Lehigh River was damaged by flooding. The news of its rapid repair and restoration together with the fact anthracite stocks had for a time run down, but not out, establishing the reliable sourcing finished off the bias, as did the beginning of mine output reaching the Delaware basin markets due to the long delayed completion of the Schuylkill Canal.
Wurts was a large thinker, and inspired his brothers to back forming a company to deliver the new fuel, anthracite, to New York City by building an ambitious canal to connect the Hudson River and the Delaware River, and both to the Coaldale coal deposits by chartering a Pennsylvania subsidiary corporation, the Delaware and Hudson Gravity Railroad, to bring coal to the Delaware and the new canal. This cable railroad would grow in importance and become the far-flung class I railroad, the Delaware and Hudson Railway.
Delaware and Hudson Canal Company
In the early 1820s, Philadelphia merchant William Wurts, who enjoyed walking about along Amerindian paths, and what today what is termed taking nature hikes, had heard of possible anthracite in the area, so took a trip to explore the sparsely settled regions of Northeastern Pennsylvania. Finding coal outcrops, he immediately realized the value of the extensive anthracite deposits.
Returning to Philadelphia, he successfully interested his brothers in backing the idea of building a canal to make easier transporting coal to New York City. The city was still feeling the effects of the depletion of stands of woodlands providing heating and cooking firewood and also squeezed by continuing post-War of 1812 import restrictions on British bituminous coal, on which it had once been relying. The canal he proposed (the first sections of the Erie Canal, opened in 1821, creating news coverage) would also tie the developing industries along the Delaware to the Hudson, which helped raise financing.
At the time, nearly all the eastern cities were experiencing energy cost increases and difficulty in getting large quantities of fuel, as most nearby timber stands had been used up, often for charcoal production enabling foundries to start up, which now needed fuel to stay in business. This general condition around most long established cities and towns in the United States is one reason so much venture capital was raised for coal and coal transportation projects after 1823 and into the early 1840s, once Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company had blazed a way forward steadily increasing annual shipping to over a remarkable by 1825.
The Delaware and Hudson Canal Company originates from the 1823 New York corporation charter listing the unusual name of "The President, Managers and Company of the Delaware & Hudson Canal Co." authorizing an establishment of "water communication" between the Delaware River and the Hudson River. The D&H was chartered by separate laws in the states of New York and Pennsylvania in 1823 and 1826, respectively, allowing William Wurts and his brother Maurice to construct the Delaware and Hudson Canal and the gravity railroad that served it. In January 1825, following a demonstration of anthracite heating in a Wall Street coffeehouse, the D&H's public stock offering raised a million dollars. At the time, the Lehigh Canal had established a reliable flow of increasing annual tonnages, and the industrial and heating uses of 'rock coal' were well established.
Ground was broken on July 13, 1825, and the canal was opened to navigation in October 1828. It began at Rondout Creek at the location known as Creeklocks, between Kingston, where the creek fed into the Hudson River, and Rosendale. From there, it proceeded southwest alongside Rondout Creek to Ellenville, continuing through the valley of Sandburg Creek, Homowack Kill, Basha Kill, and Neversink River to Port Jervis on the Delaware River. From there, the canal ran northwest on the New York side of the Delaware River, crossing into Pennsylvania on Roebling's Delaware Aqueduct at Lackawaxen and running on the north bank of the Lackawaxen River to Honesdale.From the Coalfields to the Hudson
To get the anthracite from the Wurts' mine in the Moosic Mountains near Carbondale to the canal at Honesdale, the canal company built the Delaware and Hudson Gravity Railroad. The state of Pennsylvania authorized its construction on April 8, 1826. On August 8, 1829, the D&H's first locomotive, the Stourbridge Lion, made history as the first locomotive to run on rails in the United States. Westward extensions of the railroad opened access to new mines at Archbald in 1843, Valley Junction in 1858, Providence in 1860, and Scranton in 1863. Passenger service began west of Carbondale in 1860.
The canal was a successful enterprise for many of its early years, but the company's management realized that railroads were the future of transportation, and began investing in stock and trackage. In 1898, the canal carried its last loads of coal and was drained and sold. The next year, the company dropped the "Canal" from its name. The remaining fragments of the canal were designated a National Historic Landmark in 1968.
Delaware and Hudson Company
As railroads grew in popularity, the canal company recognized the importance of replacing the canal with a railroad. The first step of this was the Jefferson Railroad, a line from Carbondale north towards New York, chartered in 1864, financed by the D&H, built by the Erie Railroad in 1869, and opened in 1872. This was a branch of the Erie, running south from the main line at Lanesboro to Carbondale. Also built as part of this line was a continuation from the other side of the D&H's gravity railroad at Honesdale southeast to the Erie's Pennsylvania Coal Company railroad at Hawley. The Jefferson Railroad (and through it the Erie) obtained trackage rights over the D&H between its two sections, and the D&H obtained trackage rights to Lanesboro.
The other part of the main line was the Albany and Susquehanna Railroad, which was leased to the D&H on February 24, 1870 in perpetuality for $490,000 per year. The Delaware and Hudson already had a history of working with the Albany and Susquehanna, agreeing in 1866 to jointly build an extension to Nineveh and subsequently ship coal across the entire line.Starr, Timothy. (2010). Early Railroads of New York's Capital District. The connecting Lackawanna and Susquehanna Railroad, chartered in 1867 and opened in 1872, was also absorbed. The Albany and Susquehanna provided a line from Albany southwest to Binghamton, while the Lackawanna and Susquehanna split from that line at Nineveh, running south to the Jefferson Railroad, south of Lanesboro. Also leased in 1870 was the Schenectady and Susquehanna Railroad, connecting the Albany and Susquehanna at Duanesburg to Schenectady, opened in 1872 (reorganized as the Schenectady and Duanesburg Railroad in 1873).
On March 1, 1871, the D&H leased the Rensselaer and Saratoga Railroad Company, which, along with its leased lines, provided a network stretching north from Albany and Schenectady to Saratoga Springs, and continuing northeast to Rutland, Vermont, as well as an eastern route to Rutland via trackage rights over the Troy and Boston Railroad west of Eagle Bridge. The D&H also obtained a quarter interest in the Troy Union Railroad from this lease.
On March 1, 1873, the D&H got the New York and Canada Railroad chartered as a merger of the Whitehall and Plattsburgh Railroad and Montreal and Plattsburgh Railroad, which had been owned by the Rutland Railroad. This provided an extension, completed in 1875, north from Whitehall to the border with Quebec; a branch opened in 1876 to Rouses Point. Lines of the Grand Trunk Railway continued each of the two branches north to Montreal.
The D&H obtained trackage rights over the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad in 1886, extending the main line southwest from Scranton to Wilkes-Barre.
On July 11, 1889, the D&H bought the Adirondack Railway, a long branch line heading north from Saratoga Springs along the Hudson River. The 'Adirondack Railway' (originally Adirondack Company) was a railroad that connected Saratoga Springs to North Creek, New York, a distance of . Built by Dr. Thomas Clark Durant, vice-president of the Union Pacific Railroad, it was started in 1864 and completed in 1871. After Durant's death, it was taken over by his son, William West Durant. The two companies officially merged on November 5, 1902. A stage-coach line was established to take passengers to Durant properties at Blue Mountain Lake and further by water to Raquette Lake. The Adirondack branch remained part of the D&H system and is still partially in use.