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action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /home/goodspeedhist/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6114Part one in the series, The Route Not Taken<\/p>\n
This article by Egbert T. Bush caught my attention because it is reminiscent of PennEast\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s attempt to dig a pipeline across Delaware Township and other parts of Hunterdon and Mercer Counties. The big difference here is that many landowners along the proposed route of this railroad supported it because they expected real benefits, whereas PennEast\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s pipeline is likely to do more harm than good.<\/p>\n
Happily for those earlier landowners, and Mr. Bush himself, the rail line was never built.<\/p>\n
\nThe Delaware & Flemington Rail Road Company<\/h3>\n
The Story of a Line That Fortunately Was Never Built
\nSurvey Stakes Disappeared<\/p>\nEgbert T. Bush, Stockton, N.J.
\npublished in the Hunterdon Co. Democrat, October 9, 1930<\/p>\nWhile we are talking much and thinking more about an old established railroad to Flemington, we cannot afford to forget that 57 years ago [1873] a number of Hunterdon County men bound themselves together as a company bearing this heading as its official name. A few of our readers may have faint recollections of that enterprising Company and its strenuous efforts, still fewer may clearly remember. But most readers probably never even heard of a projected railroad from Prallsville, now a part of Stockton, to run by way of Sergeantsville and Sand Brook to Flemington, there to connect with the South Branch Railroad for Somerville and New York.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
That \u201a\u00c4\u00faold established railroad\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 that Mr. Bush mentioned was the one built in 1854 from Lambertville to Flemington, now known as the Black River & Western Railroad.1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
According to an ambitious-looking map dated 1874, this was to be a link in an elaborate scheme of connecting roads. One link was to bridge the Delaware at Prallsville and run to Centerville [in Pennsylvania]. From there one branch went to Doylestown, where connection would be made with the Doylestown R.R. for Lansdale; the other branch went by way of Hartsville and Hatboro and struck the North Penn R.R. about ten miles from Philadelphia. It would be necessary to build these several connecting links in Pennsylvania, but our Hunterdon County Company was directly interested only in the line between its terminals with considerable indirect interest in the prospects beyond.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The 1876 \u201a\u00c4\u00faRailroad Map of New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 gives us an idea of the route. The proposed rail line is shown as a dotted line in this detail:<\/p>\n