The cemetery and Old Academy building. Just before the Warren Railroad made its Delaware River crossing into Pennsylvania, Blair built one more station, this time conceiving an entire town that would originate and mature in tandem with the commerce his railroad would bring. In anticipation, he purchased tracts of farmland that he would subdivide and resell as lots arranged between the hillside and the river. The site sprouted quickly into the village of Delaware Station, (later Delaware) with a hotel and general store, creamery, wood-working factories and a wagon manufacturer. Scant evidence of the village's railroad years remains in the sunken pit of a turntable, an occasional visible bit of railroad tie, well-worn bridge abutments, and the intermittently discernible rail bed through the village, following a bit of road out of town known as Old Route 46. But, although the station and hotel are gone, today's Delaware Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003, consists largely of buildings erected in that era, mostly unaltered and retaining the flavor of that time. In 1859, at age 57, when most men of his day had reached the end of their productive lives, Blair retired from his mercantile business of forty years to focus on building railroads and developing towns along their routes, applying his New Jersey prototype to America's Midwest. With no interest in operating completed railroads, he constructed rail lines that were then leased or sold to other companies. Blair became the major shareholder in more than a dozen railroad companies, and ultimately acquired nearly two million acres from the government for railroad and land development. Under his directorship in six different land companies, over eighty towns were laid out, many named after family and associates, as he often assisted newly 7 organized church congregations within those towns with donations of land and finances. In one interview he proudly proclaimed that he built every railroad for cash, never entered into railroad schemes on mere speculation, and never had to sell stock to finance his projects. ven at age 75, Blair continued to involve himself in railroad development when he constructed the Blairstown Railway in his own backyard. By 1877 the railway began moving freight and passengers from its Blairstown station past a stop at Kalarama, the depots at Vail and Hainesburg—site of the Lackawanna Railroad's massive poured concrete viaduct—past the former hamlet of Warrington and Columbia Junction to its terminus at Delaware Station. There, freight and riders could transfer to DL&W trains heading eastward into New York or to destinations westward. Perhaps to facilitate his personal or family's trips to the outside world, the project was more likely another speculative venture. Sure enough, in the early 1880s, the Blairstown Railway was sold to the New York, Susquehanna & Western Railroad, becoming part of that company's main line as it extended westerly to the Pennsylvania coal fields and eastward toward Newton and beyond. The name most commonly associated with the Blairstown Railway is "the Dinkey", the line's short train usually made up of a small steam locomotive pulling one or two cars. After serving for nearly half a century, the train was replaced in 1924 with a single motor car powered by a gasoline engine which served until 1928, when service was discontinued. Today, the rails are gone and most of the old right-of-way has become the Paulinskill Valley Trail along which the railway's bucolic views may still be enjoyed as well as the awesome Hainesburg, or Paulinskill, viaduct. Access to the rail trail is provided at
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