Another one bites the dust!

Got this from another list......SAD!



Thursday morning ( 9/30/04 ) the H81crew of Engineer Chuck Peters, and
Conductor George Brennen with engine 1514 will pulled the last out bound
material loads out of the Ford Distribution Plant on Ford Lead, at Tetaboro, NJ. The
last couple of weeks cleaning out the building has produced only outbound
loads. High water did not permit the move to be made today. The last loads in
were quite some time ago. Since it was built in the ( late 40s?early 50s? )
Ford was a major customer on the NJ&NY ( Pascack Valley ) line. The high cube
box cars for Ford were always easy to pick out of local consists. The busy
industrial lead was named for its major customer. It once served close to a
dozen customers, and now is down to two. With are cut and slash management,
the fate of H81, which ties its engine up on Ford lead, is literally hanging by
a thread.

Bob

njt1472, what kind of engine is 1514? My first thoughts immediately went to CNJ 1514, the famous baby trainmaster:
http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/cnj/cnj1514s.jpg

...but I realize that is probably not the same engine. :-)

Any photos out there of the engine?
Very sad about the Ford plant... alas....
BigDell

BigDell wrote:njt1472, what kind of engine is 1514? My first thoughts immediately went to CNJ 1514, the famous baby trainmaster:
http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/cnj/cnj1514s.jpg

...but I realize that is probably not the same engine.

Any photos out there of the engine?
Very sad about the Ford plant... alas....
BigDell

BigDell,

I believe it is an old GP15-1, but I am not 100% sure.....I think it was in the old Conrail paint...

Steve

I hope things work out for the crew. A decade ago that area was served by two tricks daily, five days a week

That area was once a hot bed of small industry, the kind of business which produced thousands of skilled and unskilled positions. Real basic stuff, like tension envelopes, shipping cases, sheet metal bending, film manufacturing, platic coating, battery assembly, warehousing, detergent packing, specialty lubricants, etc.

During WW II, the whole area was chock with aircraft parts manufacturers and avionics assemblers clustered around the Bendix factory.

I think now only Agfa (and half of their facility is for rent, I think) and the corrugated box company (Stone container?) are active heavy shippers. Last year another shipper west of Stone container sporadically recieved a boxcar or so, but I haven't seen any this year. Doesn't look like anything has been east of Huyler for a long time.
You know, Lackawanna says it was very busy a decade ago (and I believe it), which at first seems way in the past - then you realize that was just 1994, Staggers was 14 years old, Conrail had only a few years to go, and the US didn't exactly have a manufacturing/industrial economy explosion even then - man, what the hell happened in just 10 years?

Sir Ray,

What happened in the last ten years was the exportation of american jobs going overseas and your elected officials both Republican and Democrates not doing a thing about it while you and me suffer as they collect benifits from these leaches in the upper managment. Of course the freight railroads and sidings in China and India along with Mexico are growing at a high rate of speed while sadly the railroads in NJ with the exception of those who have strong ties with Pt Elizabeth is dead or dying.

Unless if Wal Mart, Target or local malls stopped using trucks and had railroads like CSX, NS or even M&E deliver their goods to the store's land build sidings to access the store's loading docks don't ever expect the railroads to ever come back to the way it was. Hell it looked alot better 10-15 years ago then today.

Don't expect WalMarts and the like to use rail service. Most of their stores in urban areas are not rail accessable. My brother works for Proctor & Gamble. While they get their raw materials by rail, distribution of finished product to stores is done by truck...to the tune of 400 trucks/day.

NJTRailfan wrote:Sir Ray,

What happened in the last ten years was the exportation of american jobs going overseas and your elected officials both Republican and Democrates not doing a thing about it while you and me suffer as they collect benifits from these leaches in the upper managment. Of course the freight railroads and sidings in China and India along with Mexico are growing at a high rate of speed while sadly the railroads in NJ with the exception of those who have strong ties with Pt Elizabeth is dead or dying.

Unless if Wal Mart, Target or local malls stopped using trucks and had railroads like CSX, NS or even M&E deliver their goods to the store's land build sidings to access the store's loading docks don't ever expect the railroads to ever come back to the way it was. Hell it looked alot better 10-15 years ago then today.

NJTRailfan,

Sadly, you hit the nail on the head!! And it doesnt seem like our republicans or democrats are doing anything about our border problems either. The list of illegals coming over the border increases each year.....Hate to be a pessimist, but look for more industries in the area to relocate or go out of business in the not to distant future.

Steve

NJ /CT/RI, eastern PA probably aren't typical of the rest of the US, but there's no question the manufacturing industry has hollowed out around here since the 1970s. Some of it is inevitable (people don't want factories around) and some of it isn't (lofts rent for more money as homes than factories).

But, around here, things are tough. NS decided that it was easier, faster, and cheaper to offload Triple Crown in Bethlehem and truck it here than to rail it to Elizabeth. If it takes 8 hours to get a train to Elizabeth, plus another 4 hours to get the box out the gate, screw it and haul it directly to the customer from PA. You'll get two turns out of a driver, and grab a backhaul.

Many TC customers are former branch line customers. Cut out the branch line, the switching, the delays, etc.

Capacity, capacity, capacity. Single rail on ancient road beds and even older bridges has caused rail to be incredibly inefficient in this state. Triple tracking of Lehigh to Potters, double tracking to P'burg, double tracking to West Trenton, reinstatement of freight on the CNJ would speed freight service. There also needs to be another bridge at Oak Island and MOTBY should be used for RO-RO's and rail loading, not cruise ships.