Raritan River RR / Milltown news

I suspect they are trying to push the traffic to intermodal and thus don't really want to pursue the boxcar-to-warehouse business. The plastic pellet customers can transload at a multitude of nearby facilities within 20 miles.

If that's what they are doing, it is a shame.

carajul wrote:You have to wonder why CR went thru all the lawsuits and mess to acquire the RRRR in the first place. It doesn't appear as they give a rat's ass about it. In the 70s they told the transload co to piss off and sold the former station site/yard to a condo developer. The in the 80s they torn down the engine house and office and removed the track to S Amboy. In the early 90s they torn out the switch to the Milltown spur. In the 2000s they tore the track out to New Brunswick under the Rt1 bridge. Now they've let all the customers go and the line is nothing more than an industrial track sporatically serving 6 customers at best.

Heck in the mid-late 70s when it was still independent the RRRR was booming.

It's kinda like they acquired it to destroy it!

I've read quite a few articles online and in the "Rails Up The Raritan" book on this neat little railroad. One thing I remember reading was the main reason Conrail wanted to absorb the RRRR was to show as many profitable parts of their railroad as they could in their portfolio. CR experienced numerous growing pains and red profit margins the first few years of existence. The RRRR on the other hand in I believe '79 made a profit of almost $2 million, not bad at all for a short line railroad when most other railroads at the time were operating in the red! Had the CR not inherited ownership of the Raritan from the PRR/PC and CNJ, they most likely would have never had the RRRR show up on the radar other than to interchange traffic. CR never had any intentions of growing new business or maintaining the current business or equipment on the Raritan when they took it over. Basically like you said, they took what good they could from it and then slowly destroyed the rest over the coming years. Its unfortunate that the RRRR employees were unsuccessful in the courts to break the railroad away from CR ownership and keep operating it independently before it was fully absorbed in 1980.

Frustrating facts as the Raritan River simply seemed like a railroad that any railfan or railroad employee or railroad customer would want a short line railroad to be, even to Conrail... which from what I understand is why they wanted to get their greedy hands on them.

I just got finished reading "Rails up the Raritan" which is an excellent book. I could not believe the amount of business the RRRR was doing in the late 70s early 80s. Why were they doing so good? Because management and the employees gave a darn, that's why. They were totally focused on local business. And employee moral was high.

When CR came into the picture things changed immediatly. Business plummeted to what we have today... a rusted industrial track with a handful of sporatic customers.

I hate to say it but it's pretty obvious that CR killed the RRRR with their management mindset.

As for the book it is great. Tells the whole story of the good times and even how bleak things got during the great depression. But the RRRR always pulled through. Heck $2,000,000 profit in 1979 is a ton of money, and that's when all other RRs were flat broke.

The only thing I saw CR do was chase away the customers, tear out every spur and switch they could, and kill the rr.

The Raritan River, in their last year of independence, brought in about $2M in revenue, not profit. After operations, their profit was quite small...

Infact, a little known fact is that the RRRR was not profitable in 1977 or 1978. Rails up the Raritan omits that little fact. The RRRR did post a profit in 1979, but they were not immune to the problems of the Eastern railroads. I will say, firmly, that they did do a much better job of getting and holding onto local customers, which did allow them to hold out for a long time.

I have the tonnage and revenue reports from the 1970s (I have almost all of them from 1915-1980), maybe I should organize them and write something up. They were really busy, but by the 1970s things were slowing down quickly.

Its interesting to see what happened after the Great Depression, where surprisingly the little RRRR stayed very profitable, and continued to grow in the late 1960s, and early 1970s with the High View Industrial Complex, Sunshine Biscuit on the Gillespie Branch, and Wonder Bread on the East Brunswick Branch (laid over the abandoned Serviss Branch). When the rest of the Eastern roads were in the red, the little RRRR was growing!

If they didn't have those three additions from 68-72, the revenue numbers may have been poor like all the other railroads, and they too may have been in the red in the late 60s...

You have to remember that the operational costs were killing them in the 1970s. The costs of fuel and labor were going up, quickly. Maintenance was killing them. Even if things stayed the same, the rising costs of everything would eventually consume them. Lose a big customer, like National Lead which accounted for almost 30% of their income (which did close in the mid 80s I think), and the RRRR would have been bankrupt anyway.

Yes, CR may have forced out some customers by not bending over backwards like the RRRR did, but the RRRR had no choice either. Ask Ken Stockton how many times they had gone down the South River Branch, but had to turn back because of bad track or a wash out...

Tom thanks for posting. I've like to see the tonnage info on RRRR. Also the history of annual gross revenues alongside net income would also be interesting to see, if you have it available.

Loose single carloadings on a shortline must have been a tough business in the 70s.

Take a look at the 1979 color arials. Parlin yard, the two small yards on each side of the swing bridge, and New Brunswick yard are jammed with cars. A red SW900 is drilling across the swing bridge, another red SW900 is approaching the swing bridge, and yet another SW900 is drilling parlin yard. Every building along the row has a spur that has cars spotted on it.

Fast forward to the images a few years later and literally EVERYTHING is gone. No one is not going to convince me that CR didn't kill that RR.

Carajul, I agree with you, RRRR could have held out longer on its own, maybe even to this day.

ccutler wrote:Carajul, I agree with you, RRRR could have held out longer on its own, maybe even to this day.

Morristown & Erie, like RRRR survived the Depression and remained profitable through the postwar era. It also ran into bankruptcy at the same time in the late 1970s, but unlike RRRR, it made a miraculous turnaound. (Imagine the M&E Whippany Line as Conrail?)

painterman wrote:SA2 runs to Silverline and Mauser. SA3 works the old Budweiser plant and the other customer down the line in Spottswood.
Mauser gets cars 2x a week. Silverline is getting them 1/week or less. They run Tues and Thurs. They're the only 2 customers on this side of the South River draw. SA2 also serves the brick company on the east side of the draw - and Hercules on the other side of the Gillespie wye. There's some sort of steel company between the two that had a recent siding put in - but I don't think they take much rail traffic. I haven't been back there in a few years. Maybe soon.

The Gerdau-Ameristeel plant in Sayreville still gets cars. Just yesterday I happen to be driving through the area when two CSX geeps caught me by surprise heading up the old Gillespie spur from Browns with a dozen or so mixed gons, open top hoppers, a steel flat and shoving platform. After swinging around the wye they shoved East thru Parlin and ended up at the steel plant. This was late afternoon (around 5pm) and a friend told me this job was probably the SA22. I read a couple years ago that Gerdau had planned to close this plant, so seeing the plant active when I drove up to it was a nice surprise. I didn't hang out as I've never been sure how "public" that road is that runs up to the plant, but I did see the train was already there when I made the U-turn.

BTW, does anyone have the frequencies that CR uses for Browns?? Thanks in advance...

160.860Mhz

bk77 wrote:

painterman wrote:SA2 runs to Silverline and Mauser. SA3 works the old Budweiser plant and the other customer down the line in Spottswood.
Mauser gets cars 2x a week. Silverline is getting them 1/week or less. They run Tues and Thurs. They're the only 2 customers on this side of the South River draw. SA2 also serves the brick company on the east side of the draw - and Hercules on the other side of the Gillespie wye. There's some sort of steel company between the two that had a recent siding put in - but I don't think they take much rail traffic. I haven't been back there in a few years. Maybe soon.

The Gerdau-Ameristeel plant in Sayreville still gets cars. Just yesterday I happen to be driving through the area when two CSX geeps caught me by surprise heading up the old Gillespie spur from Browns with a dozen or so mixed gons, open top hoppers, a steel flat and shoving platform. After swinging around the wye they shoved East thru Parlin and ended up at the steel plant. This was late afternoon (around 5pm) and a friend told me this job was probably the SA22. I read a couple years ago that Gerdau had planned to close this plant, so seeing the plant active when I drove up to it was a nice surprise. I didn't hang out as I've never been sure how "public" that road is that runs up to the plant, but I did see the train was already there when I made the U-turn.

BTW, does anyone have the frequencies that CR uses for Browns?? Thanks in advance...

Yes, Gerdau Ameristeel shut down for a short period and they resumed their operation on a smaller scale. They still receive scrap and they still use their on site intraplant locomotives.

My friend in Milltown says he hears the train go thru town usually once a week on Thus night. I'm going to assume Silverline windows has cut back on production since the housing market took a dump.

Past Silverline there are potential customers. Squibb stopped manufacuturing in the mid-90s but there are chemical plants still operating that still have rail spurs into them (altough the RRRR main is torn out past Rt 1 now).

Back in the mid-90s I poked around the warehouses by Ryders lane xing and they were jammed with covered hoppers cars.

CR just doesn't care I guess.

I don't know how busy the line was in the late 70s thru Milltown. I have pics of trains going thru town with box and tank cars going thru town but the tracks look rusted black.

railroadcarmover wrote:

bk77 wrote:

painterman wrote:SA2 runs to Silverline and Mauser. SA3 works the old Budweiser plant and the other customer down the line in Spottswood.
Mauser gets cars 2x a week. Silverline is getting them 1/week or less. They run Tues and Thurs. They're the only 2 customers on this side of the South River draw. SA2 also serves the brick company on the east side of the draw - and Hercules on the other side of the Gillespie wye. There's some sort of steel company between the two that had a recent siding put in - but I don't think they take much rail traffic. I haven't been back there in a few years. Maybe soon.

The Gerdau-Ameristeel plant in Sayreville still gets cars. Just yesterday I happen to be driving through the area when two CSX geeps caught me by surprise heading up the old Gillespie spur from Browns with a dozen or so mixed gons, open top hoppers, a steel flat and shoving platform. After swinging around the wye they shoved East thru Parlin and ended up at the steel plant. This was late afternoon (around 5pm) and a friend told me this job was probably the SA22. I read a couple years ago that Gerdau had planned to close this plant, so seeing the plant active when I drove up to it was a nice surprise. I didn't hang out as I've never been sure how "public" that road is that runs up to the plant, but I did see the train was already there when I made the U-turn.

BTW, does anyone have the frequencies that CR uses for Browns?? Thanks in advance...

Yes, Gerdau Ameristeel shut down for a short period and they resumed their operation on a smaller scale. They still receive scrap and they still use their on site intraplant locomotives.

~20 years ago when i was a kid- maybe19 or 20, I worked as a security guard in the scale house at the Sayreville steal plant plant, back then it was "New Jersey Steel." Depending on what the economy/construction activity was like- they would get a few scrap cars to maybe 20 a day M-Fri. They would ship re-bar out on what they called "finger cars" (flat cars metal 'fingers' sticking up that they stacked rebar bundles down in between)- maybe sometimes a gondola. Back then they made regular rebar but also had a small plant on the property that made epoxy coated rebar. I think more epoxy coated went by rail and the regular mostly by truck. I guessed the epoxy coated went all over the place but the regular re-bar was more local? The conrail crew (on the ground) was a couple older gentlemen, i dont remember the engineer, just the two older fellows that worked on the ground. I wonder if they came from the RRRR- they seemed like they had worked on railroads probably for 30 years or so at that point. They worked out of Brown's Yard if i recall correctly.

Besides the conrail scrap deliveries and outgoing rebar loads, there was quite a bit of in house rail activity.

There was a rail crane that was used to move scrap and load or unload scrap cars. At the time there wasn't enough room under the big logging type main crane to store all the scrap so some of the truck stuff was dumped too far for the main crane to reach- the rail crane would reload other cars that got emptied for the locomotive to spot back under the main crane. They sometimes reused conrails cars but had a few of their own- I remember they always had to track conrail cars to make sure they didn't use them too long and have demurrage for holding on to the car too long. Their in house rail cars where really abused- i remember they were all banged up and had the old trucks without modern bearings- with the pots that you had to poor lube into (sorry dont know the name). The scrap cars were always falling off the tracks but they would use the rail crane to fix it most times.

Besides shuttling scrap cars under the crane, and moving empties to the rail crane to reload, they had to push the finger cars into the main mill to load up. Some of those got shuttled up to the epoxy plant- others got placed on 2 tracks that ran along the building for conrail to pick up.

I remember it was pretty cool to me at the time- that most days running the in house train was a one man job- they had a giant remote control for the train. They had a blue switcher that had NJ Steel paint that was always broken. Then they bought an orange switcher that i think came from 'Fairless Steel' or something like that. The remote for the switchers was the size of like a really big lunch box and they strapped it to their chest- when it rained or snowed the yard guy would have to wrap it in a garbage bag . The remote allowed the guy "driving" the train to run it from the ground while he connected or disconnected couplers and hoses. If there was a lot of work- someone would get overtime to help- the remote coupled with sight lines limited the size of a train they could push around the plant with just one person in an efficient manner.

I remember that back then conrail would fax reports of what cars were in which locations each morning and the yard manager would tell the crew what would be coming today and what looked like tomorrow and what the next day. Seems so archaic that everything wasn't online and they had those crazy curly paper thermal faxes and yet was just 20 years ago. And if the fax got smudged and they wanted to know before the brown's yard crew was in they would actually drive down to Browns in the morning to look in the yard and see what was there so they could plan the day.

About 5-8 years ago I had some business in the Sayreville Gerdau-Ameristeel plant it it looked much the same. I think i even saw the orange switcher. At that time I also had some business in the Perth Amboy Gerdau-Ameristeel plant (formerly was Raritan River Steel I think...) that's over on NY&LB in Perth Amboy. I think they had some kind of rubber tire machine to push their rail cars around. Sadly seems the Perth Amboy plant is no more?

On August 7th Conrail removed several powered signals for the Sayreville Running Track siding at Cotters Ln. and Mauser and replaced them with wooden crossing signs. I wonder what the reason was for the downgrade being that Mauser is receiving covered hoppers on Thursdays and possibly Mondays as well.

bigblue5277 wrote:On August 7th Conrail removed several powered signals for the Sayreville Running Track siding at Cotters Ln. and Mauser and replaced them with wooden crossing signs. I wonder what the reason was for the downgrade being that Mauser is receiving covered hoppers on Thursdays and possibly Mondays as well.

Interesting. I didn't have a chance to report, but I guess that might be why on Sunday (Aug 4th) I saw a Hi-Rail truck parked on the track near the Ryders Ln crossing...