Slateford Junction
Slateford Junction was a railway junction in the small town of Slateford, Pennsylvania, built to connect the existing mainline of the Lackawanna Railroad — the so-called Old Road — with the new Lackawanna Cut-Off. It operated from 1911 until 1979.
The junction sat 28.5 miles (46 km) west of Port Morris Junction, where the Cut-Off connects with what is today New Jersey Transit's Montclair-Boonton Line. When operations began on December 24, 1911, the junction merged four tracks (two main tracks and two sidings) from the Cut-Off with two from the Old Road.
An interlocking tower at the junction opened four days before the Cut-Off itself. The junction also included a small turntable, but this saw limited use; it was dismantled in the 1930s and its pit filled in shortly thereafter. The tower closed on January 11, 1951; its operations were shifted to the tower at East Stroudsburg.[1][2]
As of 2021, there are plans to restore service along the Cut-Off. The junction is where the "golden spike" would be located.
References
- Lackawanna's Silent Sentinels - Their Concrete Towers, by Bob Bahrs; Flags, Diamonds & Statues, Volume 21, No. 2 (April 2012).
- Taber, Thomas Townsend; Taber, Thomas Townsend III (1981). The Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad in the Twentieth Century. 2. Muncy, PA: Privately printed. p. 764. ISBN 0-9603398-3-3.