Black River & Western Railroad

The Black River & Western Railroad began in the late 1950s when William Whitehead and his sons collected rolling stock and a Lackawanna #565 engine in Oldwick, New Jersey, but the expansion of I‑78 forced them to relocate to the Central Railroad of New Jersey’s Chester Branch; the company was formally incorporated in 1961. After a brief test period on the Chester Branch, equipment moved to Flemington in 1963 and a lease with the Pennsylvania Railroad enabled tourist service from Flemington to Lambertville in 1964, with steam engine No. 60 making its first passenger test run on April 25, 1965 and pulling the inaugural trip on May 16, 1965. On March 16, 1970 BRW purchased the Flemington Branch from Penn Central, creating a true short‑line that later acquired three miles of Lambertville trackage on March 31, 1976 and the Flemington‑Three Bridges segment from the bankrupt CNJ, while a new interchange at Three Bridges opened in March 1977. Freight service to Lambertville ceased by 1995, tourist operations stopped at the end of 1998 due to FRA track‑condition restrictions, and the final work train removed remaining rolling stock in June 2002; a nonprofit, the Black River Railroad Historic Trust, was formed in 2001 to assume tourist service and began restoring the Ringoes‑Lambertville line, clearing it in 2014, running a first passenger mile in 2016, restoring 2.5 miles to Bowne Road in 2017, extending another mile toward Mount Airy Road in 2019, before Hurricane Ida’s 2021 flooding destroyed sections of the restored trackage. In 2003 BRW partnered with the town of Phillipsburg to launch the Belvidere and Delaware River Railway, holding its opening ceremony on May 1, 2003 and leasing 10 miles of track to the new operation in 2004, while in 2017 the railroad began freight service for its parent, Chesapeake and Delaware, LLC.