One of the things I enjoy most about our hobby is casual historical research. One favorite topic I find interesting are lines that were planned, but never built, such as the grand extensions envisioned by the promoters of the Delaware & Eastern Railway. As seen in the map below, only the solid black route segment between Arkville and East Branch was ever built, along with the branch to Andes. The D&E hoped to tap the already overcrowded anthracite coal fields in eastern PA and also build north through the Catskills to reach Schenectady. This map dates from 1908 and is from an era of railroad mania. Financial setbacks doomed the D&E and by 1910 it was bankrupt and reorganized a year later with a new name - the Delaware & Northern. The little road made its way through a continuing series of financial troubles and finally met its fate in 1942 under the waters of the Pepacton Reservoir.
Yep! The D&E's plan was so typical of the day, wanting to build another line north out of the coal fields to somehow compete with the DL&W, O&W, Erie and D&H. Then further north, they'd have paralleled the Ulster & Delaware between Grand Gorge and Arkville, plus added another parallel section even further north. The NYS&W's Wilkes-Barre & Eastern subsidiary completed its line (from the southeast on the map) into the coal fields in 1892 and went bankrupt in 1937. The WB&E hoped to compete with the DL&W, LV, CNJ and RDG by taking coal to tidewater (via the NYS&W), being another road in the anthracite region that should have never been built.
