Lake Hopatcong | ||||||||||||||||||
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General information | ||||||||||||||||||
Location | Landing Road Landing, New Jersey 07849 | |||||||||||||||||
Coordinates | 40°54′15″N74°39′56″W / 40.90404°N 74.66565°W | |||||||||||||||||
Owned by | NJ Transit | |||||||||||||||||
Platforms | 2 low-level side platforms | |||||||||||||||||
Tracks | 2 | |||||||||||||||||
Connections | Lakeland : 80 | |||||||||||||||||
Construction | ||||||||||||||||||
Parking | 96 spaces | |||||||||||||||||
Other information | ||||||||||||||||||
Station code | 46 (Delaware, Lackawanna and Western) [1] | |||||||||||||||||
Fare zone | 19 | |||||||||||||||||
History | ||||||||||||||||||
Opened | 1882 [2] | |||||||||||||||||
Rebuilt | 1911 [3] | |||||||||||||||||
Previous names | Hopatcong [4] | |||||||||||||||||
Key dates | ||||||||||||||||||
May 1982 | Station overpass razed [5] | |||||||||||||||||
Passengers | ||||||||||||||||||
2017 | 45 (average weekday) [6] [7] | |||||||||||||||||
Services | ||||||||||||||||||
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Lake Hopatcong Train Station | ||||||||||||||||||
Location | 125 Ledgewood-Landing Road Roxbury, New Jersey | |||||||||||||||||
Coordinates | 40°54′14″N74°39′58″W / 40.90400°N 74.66605°W | |||||||||||||||||
Built | 1911 | |||||||||||||||||
Architect | William Hull Botsford, Frank J. Nies, and V. D. Steinbach | |||||||||||||||||
Architectural style | Late 19th & 20th Century Revivals, Tudor Revival | |||||||||||||||||
Part of | Morris Canal Historic District (ID16000177 [8] ) | |||||||||||||||||
NJRHP No. | 2251; 5503 [9] | |||||||||||||||||
Significant dates | ||||||||||||||||||
Added to NRHP | April 19, 2016 | |||||||||||||||||
Designated NJRHP | June 23, 2015 February 18, 2016 | |||||||||||||||||
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Lake Hopatcong is a commuter railroad station for New Jersey Transit. The station, located in the community of Landing in Roxbury Township, Morris County, New Jersey, United States, serves trains for the Montclair-Boonton Line and Morristown Line at peak hours and on holiday weekends. Service from Lake Hopatcong is provided to/from Hackettstown to New York Penn Station and Hoboken Terminal. The stop is located on the tracks below Landing Road (Morris County Route 631) next to the eponymous Lake Hopatcong. The station consists of one active platform with shelter, and an abandoned side platform. There is no accessibility for handicapped people.
Service through the Landing area began on January 16, 1854, for the Morris and Essex Railroad, but there was no stop at the shore of Lake Hopatcong. [10] [11] People who wanted to visit the lake had to get off at nearby Drakesville station and traverse from there to the lake. In 1882, after the Central Railroad of New Jersey built the Wharton and Northern Railroad to Charlotteburgh, there was added incentive to bring a station to the Lake Hopatcong area. The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad, which took over the Morris and Essex tracks, established a stop in Landing in 1882. [2] In 1910, service began by the Morris County Traction Company, an electric trolley railroad. [12]
The Lackawanna Railroad announced on July 15, 1910, that a new station would be built at Lake Hopatcong, just east of the nearby county bridge. [13] The new station opened on May 28, 1911, a new all-concrete structure with two elevators and a complete walkway on the south side of the Morris Canal. [14] Service on the Lackawanna Cut-Off, a new mainline just west at Port Morris, opened on December 24, 1911. [15] [16] The concrete overpass was demolished in 1982, after being condemned in 1978. The station depot on Landing Road continues to stand.
The railroad tracks through Landing were first laid in 1854 by the Morris and Essex Railroad, [17] which was extending its line from Newark westward to Hackettstown. The right-of-way parallelled the three-decade-old Morris Canal past Lake Hopatcong, the canal's leading source of water. At 900 feet (270 m) above sea level, the station marked the railroad's highest elevation in New Jersey, which was also the highest point on the canal, which flowed downhill to the Delaware River to the west and the Hudson River to the east. [18] But Landing itself, one of several hamlets that arose to serve the canal's boat crews and mule teams, [19] held no particular promise as a revenue stop, and so no station was built there for about 30 years.
That began to change in 1882, when the Central Railroad of New Jersey opened a station further up the lake and proved that there was money in direct passenger service to a promising vacation spot. [2] Around 1886, [17] the first station in Landing was built by the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad, a CNJ rival that had taken over the M&E in 1868. [20] The small depot and platforms were sandwiched between the tracks and the canal, requiring most passengers to enter and depart via the steel, cable-stayed Landing Road Bridge. [21] This arrangement, however, did allow passengers to move easily between trains and the steamboats that would take them to lakeshore destinations. [19] [20] A steamboat company, the Black Line, was founded that same year by "the same financial syndicate that owned the Lackawanna Railway and the Morris Canal." [17]
The station also prompted one of several manmade reshapings of Lake Hopatcong. In 1891, [17] when the new White Line steamboat company failed to secure the right to ply the canal, it dredged the swampy, non-navigable southern tip to create Landing Channel and erect a pier a block or so away from the tracks. [22]
By 1906 or so, several factors led the DL&W to plan a new station. First, the area's summer tourist trade was growing as visitors flocked to the lake. [23] Second, the railroad was preparing to begin one of the most ambitious mainline construction projects in the world: the Lackawanna Cut-Off. This new, 28 miles (45 km) route through the hills of northern New Jersey, designed to slice an hour off journeys to Scranton and points west and north, would begin at Port Morris Junction, less than a mile to the west.
So in 1910, as work proceeded on the Cut-Off, the DL&W began building a new station at Landing. [24] The main building was of native rough stone with cement trimming and a green glazed tile roof. Its oak interior had a ticket office, waiting room and baggage room. Because this depot sat up a hill on Landing Road, perhaps 20 feet (6.1 m) higher than the tracks, the station complex also included long stairs down to the Hoboken-bound platform and elevated walkways with large elevators to transport passengers and baggage. [23] The Morris County Traction Company trolley line took passengers onward to Bertrand Island. [25]
The station itself cost $28,500 (equal to $931,950 today) [26] [ page needed ] and the railroad was said to have spent $75,000 (equal to $2,452,500 today) to build the accompanying structures. [23] The new station opened on May 28, 1911, [14] six months before the first trains rolled on the Cut-Off. [27]
In 1912, the DL&W built a similar station at Mountain Lakes, New Jersey. [25]
The elevated walkways rendered the old bridge completely redundant (its duties for vehicular traffic had already been assumed by a parallel bridge of stone built in 1907), [28] [29] and it was eventually demolished. [30]
In the 1920s, the DL&W's station became the preeminent rail link to Lake Hopatcong, surpassing the CNJ's station at Nolan's Point. But change was afoot: In 1924, the canal was closed, its cargo business long since gone to railroads, and the steamboat dock removed. [17] Within five years, much of the canal was filled with new structures.
During its operation by the DL&W and its successor, the Erie Lackawanna, the Lake Hopatcong station provided transfers between trains using the Cut-Off and those headed to Phillipsburg, New Jersey, and Portland, Pennsylvania, via the Old Main line. In 1960, the DL&W merged with the Erie Railroad and the Lake Hopatcong station and tracks passed to the new Erie Lackawanna.
In 1976, the station and tracks passed to Conrail, which soon sold off the stone depot. [31] The overpass was declared unsafe in 1978, the station was declared a safety hazard by Morris County. Plans were made to demolished the aging overhead structure, which would involve new platforms being constructed. [32] The demolition of the structure began in May 1982. [5]
The stone station building, whose address became 125 Landing Road, served as a real estate office and a hardware store. Next, it was purchased by an interior design business whose proprietors restored the marble floor and other original features. [23] In 2012, the building was occupied by a role-playing games store.
On November 6, 2014, the building was purchased by the Lake Hopatcong Foundation, [33] which aimed to use part of the structure as office and meeting space, and open the rest to the public as an environmental and cultural center. [34] [35]
In 2016, the foundation commissioned a new roof of glazed clay tiles from Lodowici Roof Tiles, the New Lexington, Ohio, company that supplied the building's original tiles in 1911. The preparation for the new roof revealed deterioration in the structure's stone parapets. A grant from the Morris County Historic Preservation Trust funded the $215,000 job. [36] That year, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places and New Jersey's similar state register. [36] [37]
By 2021, the foundation's effort to restore and preserve the building had received a total of $1,129,143 from the Morris County Historic Preservation Trust Fund and two grants, or $150,000 and $254,879, from the New Jersey Historic Trust. That year, the foundation's work on the building was recognized in 2021 with an award from Preservation New Jersey, a non-profit historic preservation organization. [25]
Today, the New Jersey Transit station consists of little more than two low-level asphalt side platforms, a small shelter on the westbound side, and a parking lot. [38] A shelter on the eastbound platform was demolished sometime after 2005. [18]
Since 2008, New Jersey Transit has relaid tracks and undertaken other preparations to restore service to a 7.3-mile (11.7 km) segment of the Lackawanna Cut-Off route between Port Morris Junction and a planned station at Andover in Sussex County. It plans to launch service on the segment in 2025. [39] A further extension to Scranton has also been proposed. [40] Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) has proposed extending service to Binghamton, New York. [41]
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(help)The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad, also known as the DL&W or Lackawanna Railroad, was a U.S. Class 1 railroad that connected Buffalo, New York, and Hoboken, New Jersey, and by ferry with New York City, a distance of 395 miles (636 km). The railroad was incorporated in Pennsylvania in 1853, and created primarily to provide a means of transport of anthracite coal from the Coal Region in Northeast Pennsylvania to large coal markets in New York City. The railroad gradually expanded both east and west, and eventually linked Buffalo with New York City.
The Morristown Line is an NJ Transit commuter rail line connecting Morris and Essex counties to New York City, via either New York Penn Station or Hoboken Terminal. Out of 60 inbound and 58 outbound daily weekday trains, 28 inbound and 26 outbound Midtown Direct trains use the Kearny Connection to Penn Station; the rest go to Hoboken. Passengers can transfer at Newark Broad Street or Summit to reach the other destination. On rail system maps the line is colored dark green, and its symbol is a drum, a reference to Morristown's history during the American Revolution.
The Morris and Essex Railroad was a railroad across northern New Jersey, later part of the main line of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad.
The Lackawanna Cut-Off was a rail line built by the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad (DL&W). Constructed from 1908 to 1911, the line was part of a 396-mile (637 km) main line between Hoboken, New Jersey, and Buffalo, New York. It ran west for 28.45 miles (45.79 km) from Port Morris Junction in Port Morris, New Jersey, near the south end of Lake Hopatcong about 45 miles (72 km) west-northwest of New York City, to Slateford Junction in Slateford, Pennsylvania near the Delaware Water Gap.
Morris Plains Station is a NJ Transit station in Morris Plains, in Morris County, New Jersey, United States, along the Morristown Line at Route 202 in downtown Morris Plains. It is a local station.
Mount Arlington is a commuter railroad station for New Jersey Transit. Located in the borough of Mount Arlington, Morris County, New Jersey, United States, the station is located next to interchange 30 on Interstate 80. The station serves as a park-and-ride for commuters to catch trains for Hoboken Terminal and New York Penn Station. Trains use the Montclair-Boonton Line and Morristown Line to serve locales between Hackettstown and the eastern terminals. Lakeland Bus Lines also services Mount Arlington station. The station is handicapped accessible as part of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. The station features two side platforms and two tracks with elevators.
Netcong is an NJ Transit station in Netcong, in Morris County, New Jersey, United States. Located on Route 46 at Main Street in downtown Netcong, the small, 1-low level side platform station service passengers for the Morristown Line and the Montclair-Boonton Line. These lines provide service to Hoboken or to New York City via Midtown Direct on the Morristown Line at Dover station and Montclair-Boonton at Montclair State University station. Midtown Direct service can also be transferred at Newark Broad Street station in Newark. There is one track and one platform on the north side, adjacent to the station. NJ Transit maintains a substantial train servicing yard east of the Netcong station at Port Morris in Roxbury Township. Port Morris Yard is proposed to return as the junction of the Montclair-Boonton and Morristown lines for the Lackawanna Cut-Off line to Scranton. Transfers would be provided at Lake Hopatcong station in Landing.
Roseville Avenue was a transfer station on New Jersey Transit's Morris & Essex Lines in Newark, New Jersey, United States. The station was built by the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad in 1903 as part of a project to lower the tracks below the road surface to eliminate grade crossings. It serviced Newark's Roseville neighborhood. It once had two tracks on the Lackawanna mainline and two low-wall platforms, with an additional platform along the Montclair Branch. The station remained in service during most of the 20th century, until New Jersey Transit closed the station on September 16, 1984.
The Paulinskill Viaduct, also known as the Hainesburg Viaduct, is a reinforced concrete railroad bridge that crosses the Paulins Kill in Knowlton Township, New Jersey. When completed in 1910, it was the largest reinforced concrete structure in the world.
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The Landing Masonry Bridge, also designated Bridge 44.53, is a 136-foot (41 m) stone structure built in 1907 by the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad in Landing, New Jersey, United States. Located 44.53 miles up the rail line from Hoboken Terminal, the bridge carries the two-lane Morris County Route 631 over the Morristown Line and Montclair-Boonton Line railroad tracks maintained by New Jersey Transit, and sits several hundred feet north of NJT's Lake Hopatcong Station. By 2009, it was deteriorated and structurally deficient, and plans were announced for it to be replaced with a four-lane bridge by NJT and the New Jersey Department of Transportation.
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