The Delaware & Hudson’s original Conrail trackage rights concession was not the most direct route from the Scranton area to Newark, and when Conrail filed to abandon the Lackawanna Cutoff in the late 1980s the D&H made an immediate offer for the line.
This was not a sale Conrail wanted to make, so, after many months of negotiation (and legal action) the D&H created the East Penn & New Jersey Railroad to own & operate this line plus whatever other trackage would be needed to operate a shorter route to the NYC area.
By 1992, the EP&NJ was essentially complete; trackage rights on the Delaware-Lackawanna from Scranton to Slateford Junction, the Lackawanna cutoff from there to Port Morris, NJ, trackage rights on NJ Transit’s to Summit, the Rahway Valley from there to the original trackage rights Conrail’s Lehigh Line which was the final hop to the intermodal yard at Oak Island.
After the Parsons Vale acquired the Providence & Worcester in 2009, the EP&NJ extended their trackage rights from Oak Island yard to the carferries in Bayonne to make a car ferry connection to the P&W at 65th St in Brooklyn.
27 miles of the EP&NJ is under wire (the Morristown Line from Summit to Dover) but, aside from an occasional visit from a dual-power unit all trains are diesel powered.