Vintage 1950s Delaware Lackawanna and Western Railroad Stock Certificate

Description: Vintage 1950s Delaware Lackawanna and Western Railroad Stock Certificate 11 1/4" x 7 1/2" ~ This is a beautiful railroad stock in amazing condition. Some of this history since it is so extensive is copied from Wiki to save time on my end but of course, I read it all and was fascinated and edited some to make it cohesive. This company battled with the Pittsburgh Erie Railroad (see Listing) for decades before finally succumbing to them. The Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad connected Buffalo, New York, and Hoboken, New Jersey (and by ferry with New York City), a distance of 395 miles (636 km). They were incorporated in Pennsylvania in 1853 primarily for the purpose of providing a connection between the anthracite coal fields of Pennsylvania's Coal Region and the large markets for coal in New York City. The railroad gradually expanded both East and West, eventually linking Buffalo with New York City. Like most coal-focused railroads in Northeastern Pennsylvania (e.g., Lehigh Valley Railroad, New York, Ontario and Western Railroad and the Lehigh & New England Railroad), the DL&W was profitable during the first half of the twentieth century, but its margins were gradually hurt by declining Pennsylvania coal traffic, especially following the 1959 Knox Mine Disaster and competition from trucks following the expansion of the Interstate Highway System in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1960, the DL&W merged with rival Erie Railroad to form the Erie Lackawanna Railroad making this very unique capturing that period before the merge. The "Leggett's Gap Railroad" was incorporated on April 7, 1832, but stayed dormant for many years. It was chartered on March 14, 1849, and organized on January 2, 1850. On April 14, 1851, its name was changed to the "Lackawanna and Western Railroad". The line, running north from Scranton, Pennsylvania, to Great Bend, just south of the New York state line, opened on December 20, 1851. From Great Bend, the L&W obtained trackage rights north and west over the New York and Erie Rail Road to Owego, New York, where it leased the Cayuga and Susquehanna Railroad to Ithaca on Cayuga Lake (on April 21, 1855). The C&S was the reorganized and partially rebuilt Ithaca and Owego Railroad, which had opened on April 1, 1834, and was the oldest part of the DL&W system. The whole system was built to 6 ft (1,829 mm) broad gauge, the same as the New York and Erie, although the original I&O was built to standard gauge and converted to wide gauge when rebuilt as the C&S. The "Delaware and Cobb's Gap Railroad" was chartered on December 4, 1850, to build a line from Scranton east to the Delaware River. Before it opened, the Delaware and Cobb's Gap and Lackawanna and Western were consolidated by the Lackawanna Steel Company into one company, the "Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad", on March 11, 1853. On the New Jersey side of the Delaware River, the Warren Railroad was chartered on February 12, 1851, to continue from the bridge over the river southeast to Hampton, on the Central Railroad of New Jersey. That section got its name from Warren County, the county through which it would primarily run. The rest of the line, now known as the Southern Division, opened on May 27, 1856, including the New Jersey section (the Warren Railroad). A third rail was added to the standard gauge Central Railroad of New Jersey east of Hampton to allow the DL&W to run east to Elizabeth via trackage rights (the CNJ was extended in 1864 to Jersey City). On December 10, 1868, the DL&W bought the Morris and Essex Railroad. This line ran east–west across northern New Jersey, crossing the Warren Railroad at Washington and providing access to Jersey City without depending on the CNJ. The M&E tunnel under Bergen Hill opened in 1876, relieving the M&E and its owners the DL&W from having to use the New York, Lake Erie and Western Railway's tunnel to reach Jersey City. Along with the M&E lease came several branch lines in New Jersey, including the Boonton Line (opened in 1870), which bypassed Newark for through freight. The DL&W bought the Syracuse, Binghamton and New York Railroad in 1869 and leased the Oswego and Syracuse Railroad on February 13, 1869. This gave it a branch from Binghamton north and northwest via Syracuse to Oswego, a port on Lake Ontario. The "Greene Railroad" was organized in 1869, opened in 1870, and was immediately leased to the DL&W, providing a short branch off the Oswego line from Chenango Forks to Greene. Also in 1870, the DL&W leased the Utica, Chenango and Susquehanna Valley Railway, continuing this branch north to Utica, with a branch from Richfield Junction to Richfield Springs (fully opened in 1872). The "Valley Railroad" was organized on March 3, 1869, to connect the end of the original line at Great Bend, Pennsylvania, to Binghamton, New York, avoiding reliance on the Erie. The new line opened on October 1, 1871. By 1873, the DL&W controlled the Lackawanna and Bloomsburg Railroad, a branch from Scranton southwest to Northumberland (with trackage rights over the Pennsylvania Railroad's Northern Central Railway to Sunbury). On March 15, 1876, the whole system was re-gauged to standard gauge in one day. The "New York, Lackawanna and Western Railroad" was chartered on August 26, 1880, and opened on September 17, 1882, to continue the DL&W from Binghamton west and northwest to Buffalo. The main line ran to the International Bridge to Ontario, and a branch served downtown Buffalo. A spur from Wayland served Hornellsville (Hornell). On December 1, 1903, the DL&W began operating the Erie and Central New York Railroad, a branch of the Oswego line from Cortland Junction east to Cincinnatus. That same year, it also began to control the Bangor and Portland Railway. By 1909, the DL&W controlled the Bangor and Portland Railway. This line branched from the main line at Portland, Pennsylvania southwest to Nazareth, with a branch to Martins Creek. The Paulinskill Viaduct on the Lackawanna Cut-Off in Hainesburg, New Jersey, was the largest concrete bridge in the world when it was completed in 1910! The Tunkhannock Viaduct in Nicholson, Pennsylvania, in October 1988. A Delaware & Hudson Railway train on the bridge is dwarfed by the structure, which stands 240 feet (73 m) above the creek for which it is namedThe DL&W built a Beaux-Arts terminal in Hoboken in 1907, and another Beaux-Arts passenger station (now a Radisson hotel) in Scranton the following year. A new terminal was constructed on the waterfront in Buffalo in 1917. The "Lackawanna Railroad of New Jersey", chartered on February 7, 1908, to build the Lackawanna Cut-Off (a.k.a. New Jersey Cutoff or Hopatcong-Slateford Cutoff), opened on December 24, 1911. This provided a low-grade cutoff in northwestern New Jersey. The cutoff included the Delaware River Viaduct and the Paulinskill Viaduct, as well as three concrete towers at Port Morris and Greendell in New Jersey and Slateford Junction in Pennsylvania. From 1912 to 1915, the Summit-Hallstead Cutoff (a.k.a. Pennsylvania Cutoff or Nicholson Cutoff) was built to revamp a winding and hilly system between Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania, and Hallstead, Pennsylvania. This rerouting provided another quicker low-grade line between Scranton and Binghamton. The Summit Cutoff included the massive Tunkhannock Viaduct and Martins Creek Viaduct. The Lackawanna's cutoffs had no at-grade crossings with roads or highways, allowing high-speed service. Some very noteworthy routes and trains from this RR have been engrained in American history in movies and music for all time. Nos. 2 Pocono Express / 5 Twilight (Hoboken-Buffalo, with New York Central connections to Chicago)Nos. 3 / 6 Phoebe Snow, nee Lackawanna Limited (Hoboken-Buffalo)Nos. 7 Westerner / 8 New Yorker (Hoboken-Buffalo, with Nickel Plate City of Chicago connection to Chicago)Nos. 10 New York Mail / 15 Owl (Hoboken-Buffalo)Nos. 1301 / 1306 Interstate Express (Philadelphia-Syracuse)Nos. 1702 Keystone Express / 1705 Pittsburgh Express (Scranton-Pittsburgh)Additionally, the DL&W ran commuter operations from northern New Jersey suburbs to Hoboken on the Boonton, Gladstone, Montclair and Morristown Lines. Early publicity for the passenger service featured a young woman, "Phoebe Snow", who always wore white and kept her clothing clean while riding the "Road of Anthracite", powered by clean-burning coal Decline (1940–1960)The most profitable commodity shipped by the railroad was anthracite coal. In 1890 and during 1920–1940, the DL&W shipped upwards of 14% of the state of Pennsylvania's anthracite production. Other profitable freight included dairy products, cattle, lumber, cement, steel, and grain. The Pocono Mountains region was one of the most popular vacation destinations in the country—especially among New Yorkers—and several large hotels sat along the line in Northeastern Pennsylvania, generating a large passenger traffic for the Lackawanna. All of this helped justify the railroad's expansion of its double-track mainline to three and in a few places four tracks. Revenue freight traffic, in millions of net ton-milesYearTraffic19254588193324981944582219602580 thru 16 OctSource: ICC annual reportsRevenue passenger traffic, in millions of passenger-milesYearTraffic1925671193342819446231960226 thru 16 OctSource: ICC annual reports As you can see the drop was dramatic for a company that had put out so much money for expansion. Changes in the region's economy undercut the railroad, however. The post-World War II boom enjoyed by many U.S. cities bypassed Scranton, Wilkes-Barre and the rest of Lackawanna and Luzerne counties. Fuel oil and natural gas quickly became the preferred energy sources. Silk and other textile industries shrank as jobs moved to the southern U.S. or overseas. The advent of mechanical refrigeration squeezed the business from ice ponds on top of the Poconos. Even the dairy industry changed. The Lackawanna had long enjoyed revenues from milk shipments; many stations had a creamery next to the tracks. Perhaps the most catastrophic blows to the Lackawanna, however, were dealt by Mother Nature. In August 1955, flooding from Hurricane Diane devastated the Pocono Mountains region, killing 80 people. The floods cut the Lackawanna Railroad in 88 places, destroying 60 miles (97 km) of the track, stranding several trains (with a number of passengers aboard), and shutting down the railroad for nearly a month (with temporary speed restrictions prevailing on the damaged sections of the railroad for months), causing a total of $8.1 million in damages (equal to $81,935,776 today) and lost revenue. One section, the Old River line (former Warren Railroad), was damaged beyond repair and had to be abandoned altogether. Until the mainline in Pennsylvania reopened, all trains were canceled or rerouted over other railroads. The Lackawanna would never fully recover. In January 1959, the final nail was driven into the Lackawanna's coffin by the Knox Mine Disaster, which flooded the mines along the Susquehanna River and all but obliterated what was left of the region's anthracite industry. The Lackawanna Railroad's financial problems were not unique. Rail traffic in the U.S. in general declined after World War II as trucks and automobiles took freight and passenger traffic. Declining freight traffic put the nearby New York, Ontario and Western Railroad and Lehigh & New England Railroad out of business in 1957 and 1961, respectively. Over the next three decades, nearly every major railroad in the Northeastern US would go bankrupt. This is a unique piece of American memorabilia that was an important part of building our country. Imagine hanging this antique historic collectible on your wall as home decor in any room! Stock certificates are another thing that is limited in supply and once they are gone all into museums and collections they will be hard to get. They are such historic documents with so much history behind them. The first stock certificate was issued in 1606 by the Dutch East India Company. 407 years of history later the Walt Disney Company issued one of the last paper stock certificates from a major corporation in 2013. My pictures seriously don't do it justice. These had to be done on heavy paper stock, almost like a dollar bill but stiffer and more durable, which makes them stay vibrant and new looking for a long time.

Price: 6.99 USD

Location: Lebanon, New Hampshire

End Time: 2024-11-10T05:06:36.000Z

Shipping Cost: 2 USD