The late 1970s/early 1980s were not good for the Delaware & Hudson, and by 1983 the railroad was on the verge of collapsing. The PV&T took notice when Guilford started proposing a bargain-basement takeover (less than a million US dollars!), and counteroffered, starting a small bidding war that ran the sale price up to US$20 million before Guilford threw in the towel.
One of the first things that the PV&T did with their new property was to buy the (now unused, but not torn down yet) overhead on Conrail’s Columbia & Port Deposit, purchase a handful of E44’s, and start operating electric freight from Harrisburg to Washington DC (followed soon thereafter by a long negotiation with Amtrak over operating electrics to Philadelphia – which were granted fairly quickly – and Newark, which were not.)
The long-term plan for the D&H was to electrify the entire railroad, but this has been a long process. The line to Montréal was the first to go under wire (at 3000vdc, in 1988), followed by Albany to Sunbury (25kvac, in 1998), and then Sunbury to Harrisburg (also 25kvac, in 2002.)
In 1992, the D&H purchased – with strings attached; a condition of the purchase was that Conrail would retain the monopoly on interchange to other Conrail lines between Owego & Buffalo – the Southern Tier line that it previously had trackage rights on.
In 1999, the old alphabet route trackage rights from Scranton east to Philadelphia & Newark was spun off into a new subsidiary – the East Penn & New Jersey – which operates with new & ex-D&H Alco power (as does the Southern Tier) and modern ILW power.
In 2023, following passage of the USA’s Inflation Reduction Act, a government grant/loan was made to start electrifying (and increasing clearances to allow for double-stack under wire) the Southern Tier from Owego to Buffalo, which is expected to finish around the same time as the OSW’s CTRC electrification from Buffalo west.
The D&H owns or has part ownership in a variety of other railroads:
- Napierville Junction
- The Canadian subsidiary that owns the D&H main from the Canadian border to Montréal, now jointly owned by the D&H and the TdM
- Allegany County Railroad
- ex-PS&N route between Ceres, NY & the Southern Tier at Swain
- Batavia Air Line
- Attica to Batavia, NY, with a branch connecting to the original Genesee & Wyoming in Retsof, NY.
- Columbia & Port Deposit
- Sunbury NY to Perryville MD. Jointly owned by the D&H and Norfolk Southern.
- Ontario Southwestern
- Fort Erie, Ontario (across the river from Buffalo) to Detroit, MI, along trackage that used to be NYC’s old Canada Southern & the Grand Trunk’s Fort Erie line, plus a handful of branch lines in the Golden Crescent. (Jointly owned by the D&H and the LT&L.)
- Illinois & Michigan Railroad
- Detroit to Chicago. Jointly owned by the D&H and OSW.
- East Penn & New Jersey
- Scranton to Philadelpha via Allentown & Reading; Scranton to Newark via Allentown.