New Jersey Seashore Lines: was CNJ being cleard Woodmansie>N

I thought I may have posted this earlier, but the land clearing in Lakehurst is confirmed for townhouses. If you go further down Union Avenue, South and you try to make the next left turn you can after the tracks, there is a big sign posted by the developer for the town homes. I had noticed large chunks of concrete within the clearing and had wondered if they were the remains of the engine maintenance areas.

Thanks, JRZ. I believe you probably did mention it, I just didn't recall your answer.

Clayton better get things moving before a new possible set of NIMBYs move in to make their own noise.

For anyone that observed the sand trains in the '80's, how long did engines idle in the downtown Lakehurst area? Or did they just position the train, drop, & run back to Clayton?

Of course, in those days, there were still a number of freights running down the Barnegat branch to Toms River so that junction was probably fairly busy (relatively) with a couple of trains a day.

I drove down to the rebuilt crossing on rt. 539 on Tuesday and saw new crossbucks. There were new yellow warning signs preceding the crossing. However, the tracks were not connected to the crossing yet.
I also walked in the park off of Rt. 530 along the tracks and saw that the trees that fell across them during hurricane Sandy were cleared away.

As far as idling time at Lakehurst, I recall during the 80s where THREE empty trains would run west/south in the evening, first one about 9 o'clock or so. About 3-4 hours later, all three trains returned eastbound. They ran at about 30 minutes headway, as I remember. Hearing three down and three up in one night was great while it lasted. The engines had distinct horns and the engineers each had their own quilling styles.

I'm still surprised conrail abandoned the line from Clayton to Lakehurst with that much traffic.

If I am not mistaken, Conrail gave up on sand traffic because the rates for hauling sand did not provide enough revenue to make it worth the expense
of maintenance and upkeep. Why do you think nobody stepped in (including Clayton) to takeover hauling sand? If it was so great and wonderful I am sure SMS or W&W would have stepped in to take up the slack. But all the South Jersey foamers just can't stop thinking about what might have been!! Macrie is coming! In what century???

I remember a very long freight train coming through Hazlet back when I was a kid (I'm thinking early 90's, but it could've been as early as 1988 or 89) - to this day it's still the longest train I remember seeing on the NJCL. I thought it looked like a coal train at the time, but knowing there's no coal traffic, I'm guessing maybe I saw one of these sand trains?

Things have changed a little bit since the late 1980s however...

One thing is fuel costs...obviously. Sure, the costs are going to be higher for the railroad and running the locomotive than it was in the 80s, but I bet it might be cheaper now for the shipper with all the trucks that go in and out of that place every day

Another big thing is government money - there seems to be more money flowing from the state and federal government for rebuilding and restoring and improving rail service these days than back when....it is cheaper than repairing all these roads and bridges all the time from these tractor trailers

The traffic has worsened significantly in the 25 years since 1988.......just not as easy to get around as it used to be!

Also, and maybe more importantly, the green movement - reducing trucks, reducing pollution, all the various buzzwords, etc.

Things have changed a lot since then. Unfortunately, a lot of shippers have been lost in the meantime, but maybe slowly more and more will come back on line, again, especially if they see regular service going by.

Matt Johnson wrote:I remember a very long freight train coming through Hazlet back when I was a kid (I'm thinking early 90's, but it could've been as early as 1988 or 89) - to this day it's still the longest train I remember seeing on the NJCL. I thought it looked like a coal train at the time, but knowing there's no coal traffic, I'm guessing maybe I saw one of these sand trains?

Matt,

What you saw was an NJT MOW Train carrying ballast back in 1991 and 1992. I remember it also. There was major work being done on the NJCL and they borrowed Conrail engines. I lived in Spring Lake at the time and I saw this train often.

Remember conrail also had the conveyer trains I believe they were called, that transported rock from the Stavola quarry on the Raritan Valley Line to the sand pits and then loaded sand and brought it back to the quarry. They ran in the late 80s, and I believe ran with a diesel on each end so they didn't have to run around train when heading west on LL and RVL.

Conveyor Train: http://railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=134680&nseq=1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Holy **** that picture of the "conveyor train" just solved a mystery from my childhood thats bugged me for years. The first 5 or so years of my life I lived in Woodbridge, right next to the Port Reading Secondary. I remember several times seeing a train go by with 2 or 3 locos, 1 or 2 weird looking "crane cars" as I called them when I was 4 or 5 yrs old, followed by a bunch of "hoppers". This has to be what I saw. -Chris

Looking through some old journals, I find that the subject of the blurb I wrote below happened in the mid-70s, if that makes any difference to anyone.

GSC wrote:As far as idling time at Lakehurst, I recall during the 80s where THREE empty trains would run west/south in the evening, first one about 9 o'clock or so. About 3-4 hours later, all three trains returned eastbound. They ran at about 30 minutes headway, as I remember. Hearing three down and three up in one night was great while it lasted. The engines had distinct horns and the engineers each had their own quilling styles.

I see that their has been some activity since I was last here a while back. I did a quick search and found this, a movie made about the Blue Comet http://www.robertemmons.com/ and some old historical Aerial maps http://www.historicaerials.com/ If you go to 1970 and go to a little East of Woodmansie you can see a pile of cars sitting bunched up along the tracks.

Kevin

GSC wrote:Looking through some old journals, I find that the subject of the blurb I wrote below happened in the mid-70s, if that makes any difference to anyone.

GSC wrote:As far as idling time at Lakehurst, I recall during the 80s where THREE empty trains would run west/south in the evening, first one about 9 o'clock or so. About 3-4 hours later, all three trains returned eastbound. They ran at about 30 minutes headway, as I remember. Hearing three down and three up in one night was great while it lasted. The engines had distinct horns and the engineers each had their own quilling styles.

Thanks GSC for your answer. That is what I was looking for.