Exploring the DLnW in Warren Co. 56k?? Think twice.

I took a ride out through Warren county today. One of the places I stopped was at Washington yard. I wanted to get some pics of the turntable remains. After I did that, I took a walk around and found some neat stuff I had never even heard was there. Up on the original Morris and Essex ROW there is some pretty cool water tower remains. I have seen pics of the water plug that was near the station but I never knew where the water came from. I have never seen any pictures with a water tower though. Anyway, On to the pics:

It's hard to see but the concrete circle is the turn table. This one was above ground.







The tracks climbed a lil hill, went over this concrete thing and onto the TT bridge:



I don't know if this thing had anything to do with the table or not. It's behind it a few yards. Anyone know what it was?



Water Tower. This was a cool find!!

There is a center base with post foundations around it. Behind that is a round concrete slab, and behind that is a round metal piece riveted together. Anyone ever seen this stuff?









This thing is on the concrete slab. Anyone have a clue what this was??





After I left Washington, I headed out to the Thomas Edison cement mill in New Village. I would love to explore this place but it's on private property and parts of it is in use so I stayed on the tracks. This place looks neat as hell though. There isn't too much info out there on this plant which is surprising to me. Yankee Stadium as well as a lot of other buildings on the east coast were build with Edison cement.

Mill silo's:



These towers are the remains of Edison's elevated electric railroad. There is a huge quarry between the mill and Rt. 57. First steam loco's pulled the cars of Limestone to the mill. Later he built an elevated line that uses electric loco's.





Less was here 1972!!! LOL



I found this trailer along the tracks too:



If anyone knows anything about the Edison cement plant, I'd love to hear it.

WOW!! Exciting, Mike--Let's go there this summer when I come up--Love to explore it more!

David wrote:WOW!! Exciting, Mike--Let's go there this summer when I come up--Love to explore it more!

We were there last summer David! Haha, but I'm game to go back there again. And maybe if we're lucky, the H02 will be there that day or the Allentown train will be there (or even better, both.) With your luck, anything is possilbe. (Last year was just sick! I've never had such remarkable luck all in one day.)

David,
Sounds good to me.

I just found a picture with the Washington water tower on the bottom of page 34 of Tabors 20th century book. It shows the tower but was taken from the far west side of the yard and isn't that clear. I don't see anything to the left of it where the round slab is though, So I still don't have a clue what was on top of that.

I would think the round slab was the foundation of a steel water tank. The two pipes sticking up out of the foundation are the filler pipe for the tank and the withdrawal pipe.

There was a station here, so one tank could have been for domestic (drinking water) and the other for the lokies.

It could just be that you are seeing two or three different incarnations of water tanks which had different life spans too.

Chris

cjvrr wrote:
It could just be that you are seeing two or three different incarnations of water tanks which had different life spans too.

Chris

Chris,
You might be on to something.

Here's a picture showing 1 tank that looks like it's built right on the ground.

http://www.ebpm.com/washnj/bigpix/fan_w ... as010.html

Of course the important question must be asked: Is this RR property? I'm guessing no, but its close to the property line. I love this section of the old DL&W, so I'm going to check it out some day soon.

Could the round concrete slab behind the water tower be the cover of some sort of cistern or subsurface pumping chamber?

Wonderful pics mikedc3, thank you for those. I often stop there and I'm always trying to imagine what it once looked like in its hayday. One of my favorite other places (and a nice place to fish also) is just a couple miles away, the old Changewater trestle. Wish I had a pic of a steam engine going over it that would be cool. I was told by an engineer at the New Hope and Ivyland RR that pics do exist of steam eng's going over it but I still haven't seen any.