Boonton Branch

By the end of the American Civil War in 1865, the management of the Morris & Essex Railroad had recognized that the Morristown Line was inadequate as a freight line. The line was circuitous and westbound trains had to climb the steep 1.5% grade to reach Summit, New Jersey. Although not yet as significant as it would become in the 20th Century, the Morristown Line also passed through numerous small towns that were served by passenger trains, which could interfere with freight movements. (The term "commuter" was just coming into vogue at that time.) Rather than attempting to rebuild an existing line, the Lackawanna, which controlled the M&E, decided to build a completely new line. The new line would span 34 miles, leaving the Morristown Line just west of the Bergen Tunnels at West End (which became a junction) and then rejoining the Morristown line at East Dover Jct. (In 1903, Denville Jct. would be created at its present location and East Dover Jct. would be downgraded.)

Construction began in 1869 and was completed by 1870. Reportedly, very few construction problems were encountered. The line more or less paralleled the Morris Canal for its entire length. This was hardly a coincidence for both competitive and topographical reasons. From a competitive point of view, the canal carried significant coal traffic at the time the Boonton Branch was built. As the "Road of Anthracite", the Lackawanna tapped the anthracite-rich hills of the Scranton Valley to supply the suburbs of New Jersey. The huge increase in transport capacity offered by the new line shifted virtually all coal traffic off the canal and to the railroad: the railroad's delivery schedule was counted in hours—not days (as was the case of the canal)—and the railroad didn't freeze over for four months out of the year, at the time when its most profitable commodity was in greatest demand. From a topographical point of view, the Boonton Branch's alignment allowed for fast freight service over a line that was relatively uncongested by commuter and passenger traffic. Westbound, trains still had to overcome a ruling grade of 1%, which often required pusher engines and helper engines. Even so, the Boonton Branch's grade profile was a decided improvement over the Morristown Line's. When the section of the branch through the Hackensack Meadowlands was destroyed in 1917 by the Kingsland explosion (caused by German sabotage of an ammunition plant in Lyndhurst),[1] it was quickly rebuilt.

Denville Jct. looking westbound in Dec 2010. Until 1903, the Morristown Line crossed over the Boonton Branch here (through what is now a NJ Transit parking lot off to the left), continuing on to Rockaway (on what would become known as the Rockaway Loop to the right) and then onto East Dover Jct. (about 2 miles west of here), where the Morristown Line joined into the Boonton Branch on its way to Dover.

The Lackawanna's freight business grew consistently from the time of the opening of the Boonton Branch until the First World War. Growth resumed during the 1920s, necessitating additional tracks being laid on the Boonton Branch (4 in places). The Great Depression substantially hurt the Lackawanna's traffic (similar to most other American railroads), and although traffic saw a large upswing during the Second World War, by the 1950s the financial outlook was bleak. In an attempt to forestall an almost certain bankruptcy, the DL&W merged with the Erie Railroad (its local rival) in 1960. The combined railroad, Erie Lackawanna Railroad (EL), although full of promise, performed poorly for its first few years, losing millions of dollars. During this time, EL management looked for ways to stave off receivership. In a move that was extremely controversial, the New Jersey Highway Department (now NJDOT) moved to buy the right-of-way of the Boonton Branch between Paterson and Totowa, New Jersey from the Erie Lackawanna for Interstate 80 . The highway department's offer was $2 million for the entire width of the right-of-way (which would completely sever the double-track route). The EL, in desperate need of cash, expressed interest, but asked if at least a single track could be retained along the edge of the highway. The highway department agreed it was feasible, but quoted a cost of $2 million to rebuild a single track—an offer that was of no interest to the EL as this would not result in any cash. Public hearings were held where rail advocates criticized the idea of severing the line, but to no avail. Faced with the inevitability of the highway, the EL decided to accept the offered $2 million, rather than risk getting less from an eminent domain seizure.[2]

Since most of the railroad's freight had been shifted off of the former Boonton Branch at Mountain View, with the Erie's Greenwood Lake Branch to be used as the new eastern connection to Hoboken (via a junction between the Boonton Branch and the Greenwood Lake Branch in Secaucus), creating the new Boonton Line for commuter purposes, the impact of the severing of the line initially seemed to be minimal. On paper, the severing of the line only affected the City of Paterson with the closing of the former Lackawanna passenger station located on a hill above the city. Paterson was already served by the former Erie mainline station in downtown Paterson and did not protest the closure. What was lost, and what would eventually come back to haunt the EL, was the previous high-speed freight route.[2]

Indeed, in a decade's time after the severing of the line at Garret Mountain, all long-haul freights would be brought back to the "Lackawanna side". The aforementioned Greenwood Lake Branch had a grade profile similar to that of the Morristown Line—a line which the Morris & Essex Railroad's management had decided to bypass a century earlier. The use of the Greenwood Lake Branch would prove to be an operational headache. And after the EL became part of Conrail in 1976, Conrail specifically would point to the severing of the Garret Mountain section of the Boonton Branch as a key reason in its decision to abandon the Lackawanna Cutoff.

With the opening of the Montclair Connection in 2002, trains over the Boonton Line were rerouted at Montclair over the Montclair Branch, resulting in the renaming of the line to the Montclair-Boonton Line.

The Dover and Delaware River Railroad currently operates a short industrial track through Wayne and Totowa to serve several industries in the area== it is known as the Totowa Industrial Branch.

All mileposts are from Hoboken Terminal.

• Taber, Thomas Townsend; Taber, Thomas Townsend III (1980). The Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad in the Twentieth Century. Vol. 1. Muncy, PA: Privately printed. ISBN 0-9603398-2-5.

• Sussex Branch

• Taber, Thomas Townsend; Taber, Thomas Townsend III (1980). The Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad in the Twentieth Century. Vol. 1. Muncy, PA: Privately printed. ISBN 0-9603398-2-5.
• Taber, Thomas Townsend; Taber, Thomas Townsend III (1981). The Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad in the Twentieth Century. Vol. 2. Muncy, PA: Privately printed. ISBN 0-9603398-3-3.