The Oxford Tunnel, also known as the Van Nest Gap Tunnel, was one of seven tunnels built to complete the

Warren Railroad The Warren Railroad was a railroad in Warren County, New Jersey, that served as part of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad's mainline from 1856 to 1911. History The Warren Railroad was chartered on February 12, 1851, by special ac ...

, which formed part of Lackawanna Railroad's 400-mile mainline. The tunnel was completed in 1862, and was retrofitted with a

gauntlet track Gauntlet track or interlaced track (also gantlet track) is an arrangement in which railway tracks run parallel on a single track bed and are interlaced (i.e., overlapped) in such a way that only one pair of rails can be used at any time. Since th ...

by 1900.

History

The completion of the tunnel was delayed due to inconsistent funding,

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

-era technology, and issues with digging through

gneiss Gneiss ( ) is a common and widely distributed type of metamorphic rock. It is formed by high-temperature and high-pressure metamorphic processes acting on formations composed of igneous or sedimentary rocks. Gneiss forms at higher temperatures an ...

. The construction of the

required the completion of three bridges, two tunnels (the other tunnel being at Manuka Chuck), and cuts and fills. The tunnel was completed in September 1862. Later on, as train cars became larger, it became impossible to allow two tracks to fit through the tunnel. To address the issue, by 1900, a

, which permits two tracks that closely overlap to pass through the tunnel together, was installed. The gauntlet track maximized the overhead and side clearances in the tunnel, but restricted the tunnel to a single-track section, creating a bottleneck on the line. In the end, the building of the Lackawanna Cut-Off would be the only solution that worked. In August 2018 there was a second major collapse in the tunnel. While still passable it is not without significant risk.

References

The Van Nest Gap Tunnel.
October 6, 1862. The New York Times. Retrieved May 18, 2012.
On the Six-Foot Gauge: Hiking the Original Warren Railroad Right-of-Way
by John Drennan, June 2006, The Block Line. The Quarterly Journal of the Tri-State Railway Historical Society. Retrieved Mar 25, 2015.

External links

Lost in Jersey - Oxford Tunnel
{{coord, 40, 48, N, 74, 59, W, type:landmark_region:US-NJ, display=title Railroad tunnels in New Jersey Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad tunnels Erie Lackawanna Railway Transportation buildings and structures in Warren County, New Jersey