The tracks you saw shoot off the Bergen County Line is the Carlton Hill Spur, the remains of the former Erie Main Line left on the east side of the Passaic River. The other half of the remains are located in Clifton and Paterson and is known as the Passaic Branch and are sometimes used by NS to store cars. The missing part in the middle used to run directly up the middle of Main Street Passaic, but was ripped out by the EL in April of 1963 in favor of re-routing the Main Line over the former DL&W Boonton Line removing Rutherford Junction and having the lines split at West End instead.
The last service the Carlton Hill Spur saw was in 1992 when Conrail retrieved the last two tanks of food oils from Delsaco Food in East Rutherford located all the way at the end of the spur about 100ft from where BE Draw used to carry the trakcs into Passaic Park (now gone, replaced with Condos and Rt. 21). I watched that last train cross Jackson Ave with a long-hood forward GP38.
The Last passenger service on the line was in the 1960's when the EL ran small train between Hoboken, Rutherford and Carlton Hill, but that operation was costly and very involved.
Involved meaning that one train would come in from Hoboken, then the engine would disconnect from the train on the WB track, run down to Rutherford Junction by BJ Tower on the EB track, and run back up the line on the WB track to the coaches, reconnect and run back to Hoboken. This was done 4 times a day, twice in the morning and twice at night. After a few years of trying to maintain passenger service to Carlton Hill, the EL cut it and left the line intact for local freight to drill C.H. Frommer (still standing - in the process of being ripped down) and Royce Chemical (gone) in and out from Croxton. Remember, this was before the U34CH's and Push-Pull commuter trains. If they had been available at this time, the Carlton Hill Spur passenger service may have survived a little longer. Something similar to the Dinky in Princeton.
It was then stripped to one track sometime in the late 70's, as was the BCL from 4 tracks to 2 tracks between HX and Rutherford Junction (BJ Tower was also boarded up around this time, but has since been reopened as a MOW shed), and last used in 1992.
Now and then NJT will store some MOW units on it down by the Rutherford Park & Ride, and I once say a Conrail drill back onto it to escape the rush hour (I think, it was a long time ago, maybe 1996). NS still has stickers on the Jackson/Carlton Ave crossing, but most of the line is buried or heavily overgrow.
As for that crossing, in the summer of 2004, it malfunctioned and the gates dropped about 50% and backed up traffic for hours. Since then, the gates no longer have arms, and the crossing is mostly buried.
Wouldn't it be nice if in NJT's plan book, there was a project to re-instate passenger service on the former Erie Main through Passaic? It's been discussed here before about elevated ROW, or just buying out the property and rebuilding the original way the Erie had it, but that's never gonna happen, unfortunately. It would probably do Passaic some good.
As for the bridges, the other bridges you saw where WR Draw, part of the former Erie NYGL Branch which the DL&W Boonton Line was re-routed over in 1963 and converted from a passenger line to a heavy freight line, but that's a whole different thread right there. It was last used as NJT's Boonton Line which was re-routed over the Montclair Branch as part of the Montclair Connection project of 2002. The blue one is Lyndhurst Draw, part of NJT's Main Line (The re-routed original Main Line).
Confused, you might be... If you want anymore info, just let me know
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