1870-1880
In the 1870s the LVRR turned its eye toward expansion across New Jersey. The most important market in the East was New York City, but the LVRR was dependent on the CNJ and the Morris Canal for transport to the New York tidewater. In 1871, the LVRR leased the Morris Canal, which had a valuable outlet in Jersey City on the Hudson River opposite Manhattan. Asa Packer purchased additional land at the canal basin in support of the New Jersey West Line Railroad, which he hoped to use as the LVRR's terminal. That project failed, but the lands were later used for the LVRR's own terminal in 1889.
The CNJ, seeing that the LVRR intended to create its own line across New Jersey, protected itself by leasing the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad (L&S) to ensure a continuing supply of coal traffic. The L&S had been chartered in 1837 by the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company (the Lehigh Canal company) to connect the upper end of the canal at Mauch Chunk to Wilkes-Barre. After the LVRR opened its line, the Lehigh & Susquehanna extended to Phillipsburg and connected with the CNJ and the Morris and Essex Railroad in 1868. In 1871, the entire line from Phillipsburg to Wilkes-Barre was leased to the CNJ. For most of its length, it ran parallel to the LVRR.
The LVRR found that the route of the Morris Canal was impractical for use as a railroad line, so in 1872 it purchased the dormant charter of the Perth Amboy & Bound Brook Railroad which had access to the Perth Amboy, New Jersey harbor, and added to it a new charter, the Bound Brook and Easton. The railroads were merged as the Easton and Amboy Railroad. Coal docks at Perth Amboy were soon constructed, and most of the line from Easton to Perth Amboy was graded and rails laid. However, the route required a 4,893-foot (1,491 m) tunnel through Musconetcong Mountain near Pattenburg, and that proved troublesome, delaying the opening of the line until May 1875, when a coal train first passed over the line. To support the expected increase in traffic, the wooden bridge over the Delaware River at Easton was also replaced by a double-tracked, 1,191-foot (363 m) iron bridge.
On May 17, 1879, Asa Packer, the company's founder and leader, died at the age of 73. At the time of his death, the railroad was shipping 4.4 million tons of coal annually over 657 miles (1,057 km) of track, using 235 engines, 24,461 coal cars, and over 2,000 freight cars of various kinds. The company controlled 30,000 acres (12,000 ha) of coal-producing lands and was expanding rapidly into New York and New Jersey. The railroad had survived the economic depression of 1873 and was seeing its business recover. Leadership of the company transferred smoothly to Charles Hartshorne who had been Vice President under Asa. In 1883, Hartshorne retired to allow Harry E. Packer, Asa's 32-year-old youngest son, to assume the Presidency. A year later, Harry Packer died of illness, and Asa's 51-year-old nephew Elisha Packer Wilbur was elected President, a position he held for 13 years.
Read more about this topic: Lehigh Valley Railroad, History