Delaware-Lackawanna celebrates 25 years with a special train NEWSWIRE

SCRANTON, Pa. — Comfortably seated on a traditional folding wooden chair on the rear platform of a heavyweight Pullman business car, GVT Rail President David Monte Verde smiles and takes in the spectacular beauty of the Delaware Water Gap as the as Delaware-Lackawanna Railroad’s 25th anniversary office car special rolls along the road’s Pocono Main on a pleasant spring afternoon. One of five shortline and regional railroads in the GVT portfolio, D-L has been operating the 88-mile network of Scranton-area rail lines owned by the Pennsylvania Northeast Regional Railroad Authority for a quarter century. GVT, established as Genesee Valley Transportation by Monte Verde, Michael Thomas, and John Herbrand, has been in the railroad business since 1985.

D-L serves a network of former Conrail and Delaware & Hudson trackage including the Scranton-Portland, Pa., segment of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western main line, the Scranton-Carbondale portion of the D&H Penn Division, and the former Lackawanna & Wyoming Valley “Laurel Line” from Scranton to Minooka. The D-L operation and agreement with the PNRRA, notes Monte Verde, is an excellent example of a private/public partnership that works.

The train, operated on May 5, 2018, was the first of several specials D-L is running “to celebrate the years of success with friends, family, associates, and the Authority and elected officials that have been with us through our journey,” notes Monte Verde. The celebration will continue with another train on July 27th and culminate with private luncheons and short trips for the PNRRA Board and elected officials in Monroe and Lackawanna Counties on Aug. 22 and 23, the signature date of the contract forged 25 years ago. D-L’s success has been hard earned. “Agony and ecstasy,” says Monte Verde. “I wouldn’t change a thing,” adds Thomas.

A pristine pair of D-L Alco Centuries — C424 No. 2423, built for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and C420 405 built for Lehigh Valley — led the special on a 120-mile round trip from Scranton, over the Pocono Mountains and through the Delaware Water Gap to the Norfolk Southern connection at Portland, Pa. The five-car train included four borrowed cars from the Erie Lackawanna Dining Car Preservation Society: a former Amtrak baggage-HEP car, an ex-NJ Transit commuter coach, Nickel Plate 10-6 sleeping car City of Lima, and DL&W dining car 469. Carrying the markers — and an original 1920s DL&W drumhead — the star of the show was GVT’s heavyweight Pullman business car Erie Lackawanna 2, a DL&W original.

Best known by enthusiasts as a bastion of Alco and MLW power, D-L is better known on its home turf for its friendly and efficient service. An economic driver in the region, D-L has increased carloads by 450 percent during its tenure of operation of the Pennsylvania Northeast Regional Railroad Authority-owned lines. It’s the perfect partnership observed Mike Delvecchio as the special rolled through the Poconos: “the right people are in the right places at the right time for the right reasons.”