Rahway Valley Railroad
The earliest ancestor of the Rahway Valley Railroad was the New York & Orange Railroad, chartered in 1897, connecting the four miles between Kenilworth, New Jersey to a connection with the Central Railroad of New Jersey (CNJ), and later with the Lehigh Valley Railroad (LV). Never turning a profit, the line closed and was sold at foreclosure in 1901. The New Orange Four Junction Railroad was formed to take over the NY&O in 1901, and was looking to expand to Summit, New Jersey. This project failed as well, and the NY&O and the NOFJ were combined into the new Rahway Valley Railroad (RVRR) in 1904. By 1906, the railroad was extended to Summit, but interchange with the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad would not be established until 1931. The railroad experienced its share of rise and decline between the wars, but managed to remain profitable through the postwar era. The formation of Conrail in 1976 took away the railroad's competitive connections, and an increasing number of railroad customers were switching to trucks.
Delaware Otsego acquired the venerable Rahway Valley Railroad in 1986 after it was unable to secure liability insurance. Freight traffic had dropped off significantly by this time, and service was frequently provided by Staten Island Railway (SIRY) crews. Primary interchange was moved to the former CNJ connection at Cranford, New Jersey. After years of declining traffic levels, DO shut down the RV in 1992. The remaining property was acquired by Union County in 1994. On May 9, 2002, the Morristown & Erie Railway entered into a 10-year operating agreement with Union County to acquire and rehabilitate the remaining RVRR and SIRY lines in New Jersey.
Read more about this topic: Delaware Otsego Corporation
Famous quotes containing the words valley and/or railroad:
“Down in the valley,
Valley so low,
Hang your head over,
Hear the train blow.”
—Unknown. Down in the Valley (l. 1–4)
“... no other railroad station in the world manages so mysteriously to cloak with compassion the anguish of departure and the dubious ecstasies of return and arrival. Any waiting room in the world is filled with all this, and I have sat in many of them and accepted it, and I know from deliberate acquaintance that the whole human experience is more bearable at the Gare de Lyon in Paris than anywhere else.”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)