Raritan River RR / Milltown news

Thanks for the additional info carajul. As much as I believe that Silver Line could do so much more rail traffic with other raw materials and supplies in addition to the vinyl, I doubt that the site will ever see that much traffic again as when J&J Personal Products was the occupant. Even the recent upgrades are kind of a surprise.

I was able to post photos of the track maintenance here:

http://jdubz411.rrpicturearchives.net/a ... ?id=107512" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I am not sure if they were able to complete the work that needed to get done before the snow storms came in. No rail cars have shown up since, so I will suspect there is still a little more to do. The only other update is the rail bumper inside got a brand new coat of bright yellow paint.

Got a heads up that Silver Line took it's first delivery of hoppers on Tues (2/3) afternoon. Was kind of surprised to see they left 5 hoppers which almost fills up the space inside the plant. 5 cars seems like a lot to try and switch out all at once with new cars now with the shortened track by RT1, so we'll see how they handle it in the coming weeks.

Thanks for the update. I'm glad to see more traffic to Silveline. I went to DeVry in the late 90's and remember Conrail always switching out cars.

I am curious about the South River span bridge. Does anybody know if the river ever freezes? I know the bridge is left normally open. Seems like a hard days work hand cracking a manual bridge over a frozen river. Long live RRRR!

well after looking at bridge photos the swing bridge is cleanly high enough to not be affected by ice. I guess that was a dumb question. I could of sworn the bridge was only a few inches above water. Oops

I was wondering why no trains were running west of Ryders Lane in the snow.

Great pics and thanks for the heads-up. I wonder how frequently they'll be taking cars.

I was able to catch CSAO SA2 do some drilling at Silver Line the other week. I wouldn't say it was a typical exchange, but I can give you an idea what they do:

- Locomotive arrives with just splat car.
- They pull out all 5 cars from the Silver Line factory
- They then shove back to possibly the Highview Industrial Park in East Brunswick. After talking with Jason (bigblue5277) this is where he and I thought they would make the car exchange.
- 30 minutes later, they return to Silver Line with 5 fresh cars minus the splat.
- After delivery, shove back to Browns Yard.

The few times that I have been able to catch this train, it takes them about 30-45 min to complete the drilling. How many cars they pick up or drop off varies, but it always at least 2 and no more than 5. If they are doing a small exchange, they will do it all on the property. I still want to catch the train when they have five cars in tow to see how close to the end-of-line they come. When this train runs also varies and depends on how much volume Silver Line is producing.

Below is a link to one of the times I got catch the train going over Weston Mill Pond bridge, which I think is the highest structure along this line.

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... id=4157957" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Silver Line is scheduled to have some more track maintenance done in the upcoming weeks. The winter thaw has really done a job on the recently straighten tracks completed in January.

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... id=4163120" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I know telephoto lenses (the pic caption says 160 mm) can exaggerate these kind of effects, but 160 mm is not so extreme, and even so, that track is just ridiculous! JS

@pumpers: You are correct in the exaggeration of the lens. I was down by the loading docks were those guys were standing this past week and looking back up, it really doesn't look that bad. All in the angles.

Still waiting on news for the repairs, but it has been a quite active this week. SA2 has shown up 3 days which is quite unusual; Monday, Wednesday and Thursday so far.

I got extremely lucky when the train decided to show up during my lunch hour and ventured to get that elusive bridge shot.

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... id=4177902" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Nice job photographing the train over the Lawrence Brook. Rail service to Silverline has picked up big time. This is big news. Thanks for keeping us informed.

Some info along the line:

- The rework of the Silver Line spur happened a few weeks ago. What I heard was supposed to happen was the track would get taken out and replaced with new modular concrete sections. I guess that probably cost too much because the only work done was realignment of the existing track and fixing the ballast. A sidewalk crossing was torn out and replaced with a blacktop one a week or so later.

- Tomorrow they will be repaving Silver Line's roads along the shipping and receiving area. I will go take a look and see if they rip out the remnants of 4 other disconnected spurs that once serviced the factory. Photos of what was left should still be here earlier in this thread.

- The Washington Avenue crossing in Milltown is getting new signals. I was lucky to catch crews setting up and stopped to take a few photos of the new lights. When I passed later after work, the lights were still not up, so maybe tomorrow they will finish up. Missed a great photo op at the Milltown Station as SA2 made it's 3pm delivery to Silver Line today.

SA22 shoved to the steel plant with NS 5282, will post pics later.

Here's SA22 from yesterday...
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.p ... 675&nseq=0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Nice shot and catch. Was there a splat car at the end of the train?

bigblue5277 wrote:Nice shot and catch. Was there a splat car at the end of the train?

Thanks, and no the conductor rode one of the steel cars. There were also two cars with dirt in them, not sure what they're for or where they go.