A
Penny a View... an album of postcard views: ...Building
the Lackawanna Cutoff in Sussex and Warren Counties, N.J.
by
Wayne T. McCabe & Kate Gordon
This book has 70+ images depicting construction of the
Lackawanna
Cutoff. Only about 5 are of great interest to me.
Page
30 shows the early workings of construction of the culverts
in Andover over what is now Rt. 206 and the Sussex Branch
of the Lackawanna. This is the closest I've seen to what
the track looked like before the culvert was constructed
over the track. Amazing the network of trestle work in
this shot to get the fill up to level.
Page
35 shows the culverts over Rt. 206 and the railroad as
the fill is
being dumped over them. The fill at this point has not
yet reached the
Sussex Branch culvert.
Page
37 shows the completed Sussex Branch culvert as one looks
southwards down the track. This is not the popular view
as appears in the
Lowenthal/Greenberg book. The last of the wood 'falsework'
seems to be
undergoing removal at this point.
Page
47 is a view southwards from atop the culvert over the
Sussex
branch and shows the 'construction siding' containing
a boxcar and
hopper. a 'compressor plant' is shown on the left of this
scene.
Page
48 shows Rt. 206 as viewed atop the culvert. To the left
one can
see the old Branch complete with semaphore signal.
The
other images definitely make the price of the book a deal.
They
depict such highlights as the digging of the Roseville
tunnel, to the
early construction of the Paulinskill Viaduct. My only
caveat would be that while the pictures are very nice,
printed in sepia tone, some of the captions contain errors.