Stourbridge Line Rail Excursions
Honesdale, PA
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About Stourbridge Line Rail Excursions
Ride tourist trains over former Erie Railroad trackage between Honesdale and Hawley, tracing the Lackawaxen River and the old Delaware and Hudson Canal through the rural northern Poconos. Departures leave from the town where the Stourbridge Lion made the western hemisphere's first commercial locomotive run on rails in 1829 — a replica is displayed in Honesdale — while seasonal railbikes use the Hawley-to-Lackawaxen segment.
History
Honesdale is where American railroading effectively began: the Delaware & Hudson's gravity railroad brought coal over the mountains from Carbondale starting in 1829, and on August 8, 1829, the British-built Stourbridge Lion made what the Wayne County Chamber of Commerce calls the first commercial locomotive run on rails in the western hemisphere. The present line dates from 1860, when the Pennsylvania Coal Company built from Hawley to the Erie Railroad at Lackawaxen; the Erie leased it as its Hawley Branch and pushed rails to Honesdale after 1868 under the Jefferson Railroad charter. Following the Erie Lackawanna's 1972 bankruptcy, the lightly trafficked Honesdale Branch was left out of Conrail, and Delaware Otsego's Lackawaxen and Stourbridge Railroad ran its first train on April 1, 1976. Seasonal passenger excursions, sponsored by the county chamber of commerce, began in 1979. After a 2005 flood destroyed the Wallenpaupack Creek trestle, businessman Paul Brancato bought the line in May 2008; the Morristown & Erie withdrew in December 2011, and excursions resumed on May 9, 2015 under the Delaware Lackawaxen & Stourbridge Railroad of Tom Myles' Myles Group.
The Trains
Motive power on the Stourbridge Line includes an EMD FP7 — Canadian Pacific Railway 4040, renumbered as Pennsylvania Railroad 9880 and kept operational at Honesdale — and an EMD BL2, ex-Bangor and Aroostook #54, assigned to the Lackawaxen and Stourbridge Railroad. The shortline also leases out a railbike operation that seasonally uses the Hawley-to-Lackawaxen segment, and a replica of the 1829 Stourbridge Lion steam engine is on display in Honesdale. In its early excursion years the line briefly ran Auto-Train dome cars behind ALCO S-2 and RS-3 diesels.
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