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 its system.

The "Valley Railroad" was organized March 3, 1869, to connect the end of the original line at Great Bend, Pennsylvania, to Binghamton, New York, avoiding reliance on the Erie.

On December 1, 1903, the company began operating the Erie and Central New York Railroad, a branch of the Oswego line from Cortland Junction east to Cincinnatus.

The Delaware Valley Railway was organized with visions of linking the Lackawanna north to the Erie Railroad at Port Jervis, New York[1] beginning with plans in 1893 and construction in 1901.

In 1910 they were enlarged and upgraded at a cost of $2 million, including a massive machine and erecting shop measuring 582 by 342 feet.

[citation needed] Noteworthy among these were:[4][5] The railroad also ran commuter operations from the North Jersey suburbs to Hoboken on the Boonton, Gladstone, Montclair and Morristown Lines.

The post-World War II boom enjoyed by many U.S. cities bypassed Scranton, Wilkes-Barre and the rest of Lackawanna and Luzerne counties.

In the wake of Hurricane Diane in 1955, all signs pointed to continued financial decline and eventual bankruptcy for the DL&W.

Among other factors, property taxes in New Jersey were a tremendous financial drain on the Lackawanna and other railroads that ran through the state: a situation that would not be remedied for another two decades.

[7][page needed] To save his company, Lackawanna president Perry Shoemaker sought a merger with the Nickel Plate Road, a deal that would have created a railroad stretching more than 1,100 miles (1,800 km) from St. Louis, Missouri and Chicago, Illinois to New York City and would have allowed the Lackawanna to retain the 200 miles (320 km) of double-track mainline between Buffalo and Binghamton, New York.

The idea had been studied as early as 1920, when William Z. Ripley, a professor of political economics at Harvard University, reported that a merger would have benefited both railroads.

Shoemaker next turned, in 1956, to aggressive but unsuccessful efforts to obtain joint operating agreements and even potential mergers with the Lehigh Valley Railroad and the Delaware and Hudson Railway.

This traffic pattern would remain in effect for more than ten years—past the discontinuation of passenger service on January 6, 1970—and was completely dependent on the lucrative interchange with the New Haven Railroad at Maybrook, New York.

After the New England Gateway closed, EL's management was forced to downgrade the Erie side, and even considered its abandonment west of Port Jervis.

In the meantime, the EL was forced to run its long freights over the reconfigured Boonton Line, which east of Mountain View in Wayne, NJ meant running over the Erie's Greenwood Lake Branch, a line that was never intended to carry the level of freight traffic to which the EL would subject it.

[11] In 1972, the Central Railroad of New Jersey abandoned all its operations in Pennsylvania (which by that time were freight-only), causing additional through freights to be run daily between Elizabeth, NJ on the CNJ and Scranton on the EL.

The trains, designated as the eastbound SE-98 and the westbound ES-99, travelled via the Lackawanna Cut-Off and were routed via the CNJ's High Bridge Branch.

[12] During its time, the EL diversified its shipments from the growing Lehigh Valley and also procured a lucrative contract with Chrysler to ship auto components from Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania.

The opening of Interstates I-80, I-380, and I-81 during the early 1970s, which in effect paralleled much of the former Lackawanna mainline east of Binghamton, New York, caused more traffic to be diverted to trucks.

Railroad officials said the primary reasons were the EL's early-1960s severing of the Boonton Branch near Paterson, New Jersey, and the grades over the Pocono Mountains.

The Morristown Line is the only piece of multi-track railroad on the entire 900-mile Lackawanna system that has not been reduced to fewer tracks over the years.

The line between Slateford Junction and Scranton remained in legal limbo for nearly a decade, but was eventually purchased, with a single track left in place.

The Lackawanna Cut-Off's right-of-way, on the other hand, was purchased by the state of New Jersey in 2001 from funds approved within a $40 million bond issue in 1989.

The Syracuse and Utica branches north of Binghamton were sold by Conrail to the Delaware Otsego Corp., which operates them as the northern division of the New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway.

In 2014, it purchased the former DL&W main from Taylor, PA to Binghamton, NY from the Canadian Pacific Railway, which it continues to operate to this day.

Trains on the Morristown Line run directly into New York's Pennsylvania Station via the Kearny Connection, opened in 1996.

Formerly, the line ran solely to the DL&W's historic terminal in Hoboken and a transfer to underground rapid transit was required to pass under the Hudson river into Manhattan, or a ferry.

Since the 1999 breakup of Conrail, the former DL&W main line from Scranton south-east to Slateford in Monroe County has been owned by the Pennsylvania Northeast Regional Railroad Authority (PNRRA).

Excursion trains, hauled by visiting Nickel Plate 765 and other locomotives, run from Steamtown to Moscow and Tobyhanna (with infrequent extensions to East Stroudsburg or Delaware Water Gap Station, both on the Pocono Mainline).

Shorter main line remnants are Groveland-Greigsville (Genesee & Wyoming) and Lancaster-Depew (Depew, Lancaster & Western).