Lehigh and Hudson River Railway

The roots of the L&HR begin with the founding of the Warwick Valley Railroad.

The Warwick Valley Railroad was organized March 8, 1860, by a group of local dairymen and business owners led by Grinnell Burt (1822–1901) as a means of connecting the mainline of the New York and Erie Rail Road at Greycourt, New York, southwest to Warwick, New York. It opened in 1862 and was operated as a branch of the broad-gauged Erie.

The Pequest and Wallkill Railroad was chartered by 1870 to build an extension in New Jersey, running from Belvidere on the Delaware River and Belvidere Delaware Railroad northeast to the New York state line. The Lehigh and Hudson River Railroad was chartered later as a competitor, planning to build from Belvidere to McAfee, with the Wawayanda Railroad running the rest of the way to the state line and to a connection with the Warwick Valley Railroad.

In April/May 1881, the three companies merged to form a new Lehigh and Hudson River Railroad and on April 1, 1882, the Warwick Valley Railroad joined, forming the Lehigh and Hudson River Railway (L&HR). Grinnell Burt would serve as the president of the newly consolidated line, as he had with the WVRR, up until his death in 1901 and would be instrumental in progressing the L&HR to become a "link in a great chain" of transportation in the northeast.

In the meantime, the Sussex Railroad had built a branch from Hamburg to South Vernon (McAfee); the L&HR bought this around 1881. The Warwick Valley Railroad had built an extension southwest to McAfee in March 1880, and the full line opened August 14, 1882, connecting Belvidere, New Jersey, to Greycourt, New York.

For several years, the L&HR carried freight from its western connections to Greycourt where the Erie operated a branch to the car floats at Newburgh, New York. These car floats across the Hudson River served as a vital rail link to New England. However, by the 1880s this line was already being made obsolete by the planned construction of the Poughkeepsie Bridge and an all-rail route across the Hudson. Sensing the opportunity, the Orange County Railroad was chartered as an L&HR line on November 28, 1888, and opened the following year, extending the line northeast from Greycourt to Burnside where Trackage rights were obtained over a short piece of the New York, Ontario and Western Railway from the junction at Burnside west to the major junction at Campbell Hall. Shortly thereafter, the line was extended further north to Maybrook. At Maybrook, the line junctioned with the Central New England Railway, who would build an enormous staging yard for trains continuing east via the Poughkeepsie Bridge over the Hudson River to New England.

The South Easton and Phillipsburg Railroad of New Jersey, and the South Easton and Phillipsburg Railroad of Pennsylvania was organized on July 25, 1889, to build a bridge over the Delaware River between Easton, Pennsylvania, and Phillipsburg, New Jersey. The former built 460' on the New Jersey side, while the latter built 850' on the Pennsylvania side. Bridge construction began on November 19, 1889, and concluded the following year on October 2. "The South Easton and Phillipsburg Railroad of New Jersey and South Easton and Phillipsburg of Pennsylvania were consolidated with the Lehigh and Hudson River Railway on April 2, 1912. Subsequently, the L&HR obtained trackage rights over 13 miles of the Pennsylvania Railroad's (PRR) Belvidere Delaware Railroad between Phillipsburg and Belvidere; once the bridge was completed, the L&HR had a continuous line from Maybrook to Easton. At Easton, an interchange could be made with the Central Railroad of New Jersey and Lehigh Valley Railroad, while interchange with the PRR was at Phillipsburg.

In 1905, the L&HR eventually obtained trackage rights over the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad's (DL&W) Sussex Railroad from the junction at Andover south to Port Morris, where it interchanged with the main line of the DL&W.

At its peak, L&HR stretched 72 miles between Belvidere and Maybrook with trackage rights on the PRR's Belvidere Delaware Railroad from Belvidere to Phillipsburg, New Jersey, across its own bridge over the Delaware River to Easton, Pennsylvania, thence via trackage rights over the CNJ to their Allentown yards.

The main purpose of the L&HR was to act as an extremely important "bridge line" forwarding traffic from the coal and manufacturing regions to New England via the Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge. Because nearly 100% of its ownership stake was split between the larger railroads that the line interchanged with, and with none having a controlling interest, the L&HR could rely on steady business forwarding this freight while maintaining independent control. The railroad ran almost exclusively through trains between Allentown and Maybrook with some exceptions. As the L&HR was built along a length of the Great Appalachian Valley, grades were relatively mild and long flat stretches of rail made speeds of over 60 mph common. The L&HR was an extremely efficient operation and it was possible to make the full run in less than 3+1⁄2 hours. With the exception of a short portion of double-track at Belvidere, the entire line was single-tracked with occasional passing sidings every 5–10 miles to handle the high volume of trains. Due to this streamlined operation, trains out of Allentown ran directly to Maybrook without having to be switched or otherwise handled as almost of the freight was destined to the Poughkeepsie Bridge and New England. Trains destined to Allentown would have to be re-blocked in Warwick for the connecting carriers such as the DL&W, LV, Reading, and PRR. The DL&W interchange at Port Morris via trackage rights on the Sussex Branch at Andover Jct. proved to be incredibly important and a source of much of the L&HR's business.

Online business, once the very impetus for the original construction of the Warwick Valley Railroad, became increasingly over time, a much smaller part of the L&HR's business and operations. With a few exceptions, there were no major online heavy industries besides the dozens of creameries and ice houses that dotted the line along its entire length. The dairy industry was especially strong in Warren, Sussex, and Orange Counties where the L&HR serviced numerous farming communities and forwarded their products to the interchange with the Erie and Greycourt where they would then be sent to market in New York City. As trucks began to replace rail as the preferred method of shipping for dairy products, this business all but dried up by the late 1930s. The L&HR was also an important supplier of coal for these communities serving as a link to the anthracite mining regions of Pennsylvania via their connections with the DL&W and CNJ. However, when home heating oil began to replace coal as the primary method to heat homes, the L&HR ceased not only local coal deliveries, but saw a reduction in the volume of coal cars destined for New England via Maybrook.

There were several Limestone quarries and gravel pits along the line in New Jersey including at Limecrest and McAfee, but the largest online customer was the New Jersey Zinc Company at Franklin, New Jersey. Zinc ore was a major source of revenue and carloads of zinc would be sent via the L&HR to the massive Zinc mills at Palmerton, Pennsylvania. The mine was so large in fact that Franklin was once home to three railroads; the L&HR, NYS&W until 1958, and the DL&W until 1934. Although the L&HR owned very few freight cars of its own, they did have a notable fleet of zinc hoppers. A local job out of Warwick would run down to Franklin every day to switch the Zinc mine as well as local industries along the Mine Hill Railroad until the mine finally closed its doors in 1954.