CHANNEL STRUCTURE DEMOLISHED

I'm glad to hear that a bottlign co wil lbe a potential buyer. I hope that deal goes through and that M&E wil lbe contracted to do their shipping/recieving of product. A pipe dream but when i'm in NJ visiting family I would love to see the 19 or 18 or even the Ben J. Friedland switcher haul a bunch of box cars in and out of that place. Now that would make a great photo op.

What was the max and usual number of cars that an M&E loco pulled in and out of the old Channel Facility? I'm guessing around 6 maybe 8.

Yes and no on the town. I've been told by a source I trust that the site could have been sold/in use with a rail shipper years ago except for one thing. Channel had signed an agreement with the township at some point to end further outside storage of materials such as lumber. The potential tenant needed outside/cheap storage as an essential element of their business plan. Despite it meaning jobs and an occupied facility the town refused to negate the deal. Don't know if it was the current administration.

I hope not because if so you can kiss those jobs bye bye and that parcel of land will never meet it's full potatial and the M&E will not be able to expand out as they should.

Hopefully the town's adminstration will see the light and get rid of this law once and for all. I'd rather have that bottling plant there then yet another Mc Mansion/retail development. That town can be a hero in this and create jobs not only for the bottling co but for the railroad as well as they would need more peopel to run the trains due to more customers and more engines and you definantly need more people to maintain those engines/cars.

>>>Regardless as to what the speculation may be, this property is zoned for commercial/industrial. You will not see "condos".<<<

Maybe. Zoning ordinances are often written in reverse restriction language. In other words, an area that is residential is so because it says no industrial or commercial, an area that is commercial simply says no industrial, and industrial areas have no restrictions at all. So residential or commercial structures could be built in an industrial area, if a developer thinks it would sell, subject to the exact wording of the zoning ordinance.

NJTRailfan wrote:I'd rather have that bottling plant there then yet another Mc Mansion/retail development. That town can be a hero in this and create jobs not only for the bottling co but for the railroad as well

Not necessarily - here on Long Island I don't really know of any bottling plants that use rail - the ones I do know of were never built by rail ROWs anyway (except the Pepsi bottling plant in Carle Place/Westbury (between Magnacare and Babys 'R' Us on Gate Blvd), which was on the former LIRR Garden City branch - doesn't seem if there ever were any sidings to it). I know what you are thinking, tank cars of Syrup/Sweetner in (the bottles/cans I think would probably come in via trailer/container), but apparently they dilute the syrup so much that only a tanker truck every few days is enough .
I know there was a distributor of Coors beer in Maspeth that got rail shipments for a few years in the 1990s (so what happened there, NY&A?), and I think the abortive LIRR trailer train (bogies) service had beer distributors in mind, but that went nowhere...

Passing the site today on my way up to CCM, there's a banner reading "cadbury schweppes..." another snack co. hanging from the fence of the development. Looks like the site may be slated for either a production or distribution facility - either way, there's potential for rail service. Since the trackage here has reamined in place thru all the construction (including the sidings which are not on M&E property) we might see some action here again yet.

From what I heard, Candbury will use the site as offices, not as a production site.

Too bad. It would have been nice to see a new freight customer.

7 Train wrote:

Passing the site today on my way up to CCM, there's a banner reading "cadbury schweppes..." another snack co. hanging from the fence of the development. Looks like the site may be slated for either a production or distribution facility - either way, there's potential for rail service. Since the trackage here has reamined in place thru all the construction (including the sidings which are not on M&E property) we might see some action here again yet.

From what I heard, Candbury will use the site as offices, not as a production site.

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The Morristown Record said the same thing in its article a few weeks ago. Cadbury just bought several new lines of candy and wants to put all the management in one place