Cedar Grove, NJ RRs

If someone can help me out with a quick North Jersey RR question - which RR was it that ran through Cedar Grove at a northward angle from the west to the east and crossed Cedar Grove almost at the center of town? I did a search and I came up with what seemed like 3 different lines. Any help would be appreciated.

ex-Erie Caldwell Branch

The line started in Great Notch and connected with the Morristown & Erie in Essex Fells.....

I think the M&E had a chance to but the line (between Essex Fells & GN) from the E-L or Conrail for a cheap price..........sad that they Fluffed Off the opportunity!

Sad, but with Conrail owning both ends there was really no need for M&E to buy it. By then, the State Hospital was either converted off of coal or in the process of being closed down and there was really very little other traffic on the line.

Had M&E bought it, all they would have accomplished was to gain two interchanges with the same railroad and pick up a decently sized bridge (with damaged abutments) to maintain.

SemperFidelis wrote:Sad, but with Conrail owning both ends there was really no need for M&E to buy it. By then, the State Hospital was either converted off of coal or in the process of being closed down and there was really very little other traffic on the line.

Had M&E bought it, all they would have accomplished was to gain two interchanges with the same railroad and pick up a decently sized bridge (with damaged abutments) to maintain.

Yeah, I agree. What would two interchanges with Conrail have accomplished, especially with freight traffic down all over the place at that time..?
Unless of course they had plans for commuter passenger service!

The primary reason for M&E to acquire the Caldwell Branch would have been to preserve an interchange for high and wide loads (such as periodically went to the power station in Roseland) that can't come down the Morristown line under the catenary. These types of loads had been the primary use of the Essex Fells interchange, with occasional other traffic based on routing, post the E-L merger. Had the acquisition that brought the railroad out of bankruptcy (and made it into a railway) occurred in time, M&E likely would have gone after the branch. That statement is based on a conversation I had with Ben Friedland sometime around 1983 or 84. Whether it would have been able to be done can never be known, but Ben would have been interested in preserving the connection.

RS115 wrote:The primary reason for M&E to acquire the Caldwell Branch would have been to preserve an interchange for high and wide loads (such as periodically went to the power station in Roseland) that can't come down the Morristown line under the catenary. These types of loads had been the primary use of the Essex Fells interchange, with occasional other traffic based on routing, post the E-L merger. Had the acquisition that brought the railroad out of bankruptcy (and made it into a railway) occurred in time, M&E likely would have gone after the branch. That statement is based on a conversation I had with Ben Friedland sometime around 1983 or 84. Whether it would have been able to be done can never be known, but Ben would have been interested in preserving the connection.

For at least a couple of decades there have been specially designed trailers to transport large utility transmission transformers. Most are manufactured overseas and only transported by rail if the destination is too far from a port to make the truck transport practical. Odds are the very rare (transformers last for decades) need for a move to Roseland Switch would not have justified the purchase and maintenance on the line.

Thank you all for the info. I am a little dim in the RR knowledege of Essex Co., and this helped get things straight for this area.

Just so you know, somewhere near the Kimberly Academy in Montclair is the beginnings of a tunnel that would have brought the DL&W from Montclair to points I'm uncertain of. I'd assume the line would have run somewhere along the general alignment of Bloomfield Avenue until it reached Denville, but I've never been able to find too much information on that project.

SemperFidelis wrote:Just so you know, somewhere near the Kimberly Academy in Montclair is the beginnings of a tunnel that would have brought the DL&W from Montclair to points I'm uncertain of. I'd assume the line would have run somewhere along the general alignment of Bloomfield Avenue until it reached Denville, but I've never been able to find too much information on that project.

Here's a bit.

http://www.northjersey.com/community/hi ... d_out.html

Hey, thank you very much!

Now that I think of it, I remember going to Verona Park and thinking that the berms looked like railroad rights-of-way but I knew no railroads ran into that valley so I discounted them.

Getting a little off-topic now, but the Morris County Traction Company actually wanted to lay a route in the center median of Bloomfield Avenue (now US Route 46) from Denville to a connection with the 29-Bloomfield Line of Public Service Coordinated Transport in West Caldwell.

I'm guessing that this branch, apparently an offshoot of the Erie, would have followed a somewhat similar route.

Here's a map showing the proposed tunnel line:

http://www.historicmapworks.com/Map/US/ ... air+Right/

and a current map approximating the ROW: (Cut and paste the ENTIRE url for the markers)

http://mapper.acme.com/?ll=40.82216,-74 ... clair%20NJ