Trains in Brigantine

As some of you might know..... I am a BIG railfan living in Brigantine. I've known for some time that at somepoint in "North Atlantic City" which Brigantine was once called, there was a railroad....... can anyone tell me were it went? How it got here? Were the train station was?

I highly doubt there were any railroads that served Brigantine Island!! My parents have a summer home down by Pirates Den and I remember talking to someone who said the island may have had street cars....If they did they were gone by the 1940's..........

Njt4172, I no for a fact that there was a railroad in Brigantine because my grandfather told me and he's lived here all of his life.

Well then the best i can say is search the old New Jersey topography maps and look back to the early 1900's. If you dont see any rails, there where none.

http://historical.maptech.com/quad.cfm? ... &series=15
or
http://historical.maptech.com/quad.cfm? ... &series=15

Sorry Mr.njt4300...I think your grandfather is telling you bed time stories. I saw no evidence of any railroad ever going through Brigantine....

Steve

Well I guess I was mistaken I did some investigating and it was indeed a double decker trolly line........ my mistake!

If you look in the "NE States" volume of that awesome railroad atlas series, you'll see that there was a line to Brigantine. It split off the AC line around Pomona and took a path roughly equivalent to what is now Jimmie Leeds road. Of course, this is turn of the century stuff and I've not seen pictures or anything else to corrorborate. However, I tend to believe the maps as these books are extremely well researched.

Thank you Steel wheels atleast you believe me . O one more thing, its a little off topic but my social studies teacher said Brigantine was a hot spot during WWI for smugling alcohol in to the USA Ships used to pull in to docks and a door would open and there would be tracks underground. To confirm this, in my Friends basement he has tracks!

I'm remember seeing a mao showing that there was a rail line to Brigantine. IIRC, it came in on its own causeway over the mudflats west of Brigantine. Danged if I can find it.

The Brigantine railline split off the Atlantic City Railroad just before Pomona Road in the Pomona section of Galloway Twp and proceeded due east along what is now Great Creek Road. It crossed through what is now the Forsythe Wildlife Refuge (the public access road in the Forsythe refuge is the former rail bed), went over Grassy Bay and entered Brigantine Island near where the Brigantine Golf Course is currently located, actually bisecting the fairway of hole #17. It then proceeded towards the ocean roughly along what is now Roosevelt Boulevard, with the station near the intersection of Brigantine Avenue & Roosevelt. Length of track from Pomona to Brig Station was approximately 14 miles. It was occasionally referred to as "swamp siding".
Storms damaged the trestle over Grassy Bay around the turn of the century (the exact date escapes me) and it was never rebuilt.

There was also a trolley line operated by Brigantine Transit Co. that travelled the length of Brigantine Island.

Some more details (with a photo or two) can be found in the book Railroading in Atlantic County by Andrew Russell c.1981, which can be found at the Atlantic County Library in several branches.

And here:

http://www.brigantinebeachnj.com/history.html

shetzer,

Wow! That is some pretty awesome info I never knew of...I knew about the street cars, but never realized there was a 14 mile RR until turn of the century!!

Steve

I've seen this road on old maps as well. I also happened to have a copy of Brinkman's The Tuckerton Railroad on my desk while I was reading this thread. His book contains a map showing both projected and built railroads. It shows this one as being built, so I guess we have more than enough thumbs up to indicate it really existed.

Thank you Shetzer, Thanks all of you that helped prove it!

Shetzer, If you ever come to Brigantine go down Roosevelt Blvd. Down by my school and it is soo wide it looks as if there was a station there. In the midle of Roosevelt, there is a circle which I think was a round has back in the day.

More info on the Brigantine Beach Railroad! I was poking around further south than I've ever been with my boat yesterday. Sure enough, there are a bit under 100 yards of the remains of what could only be an old trestle poking out from the northwest bank of Grassy Bay. It lines up perfectly with the south dike of the driving loop on the Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge. Naturally, I didn't have my camera. I would have liked to poke around on the marsh as well to explore the ROW, but the greenhead flies were pretty nasty. I'll try to get back in a few weeks when the cooler weather knocks them down a bit. I also just checked out the satellite photos on Google Maps and the trestle remains and ROW on the marsh are plainly visible (Ok, not as plain as the Brooklyn Bridge, but I could certainly make them out!).