Rock Brook Bridge Question

Here's one for you RCT&HS historians. While doing some exploring of the Rock Brook Bridge area yesterday, I came across this concrete whatever in the ground a few feet east of the bridge area. Since this is the only "structure" within a half a mile of anything else (other than the bridge, of course), what purpose did this "hole-in-the-ground" serve? Just curious, as I am trying to document the bridge's history for the Van Harlingen Historical Society and was curious if it is connected to the bridge somehow.

The bridge is a four stone arch viaduct over Rock Brook in Skillman, New Jersey on the CSX Trenton Line (ex-Reading New York Branch). The 250' viaduct was built by the Philadelphia & Reading RR in 1876, and widened about 1912 to accommodate 4 tracks by the Reading Railroad. Hence, one side has been "concreted" over while the other (west) side is still in its original stone.

http://kpiersol2.rrpicturearchives.net/ ... ?id=668309

Got this shot at the bridge last fall:

http://kpiersol2.rrpicturearchives.net/ ... ?id=243220

It looks like a utility access pit for pipes running under the bridge, obviously abandoned. That's my guess.

Nice pix, the AC unit on 7760 was obviously swapped from an un-repainted Conrail unit. As far as the pit goes, my first guess was an abandoned battery box. Another guess would be a pump house for getting water from the stream to track level to feed track pans for steam locos to pull water "on the fly". My last guess would have been a compressor house for an electro-pneumatic interlocking, not sure if there was ever a tower or interlocking at that location.

glennk419 wrote:As far as the pit goes, my first guess was an abandoned battery box. Another guess would be a pump house for getting water from the stream to track level to feed track pans for steam locos to pull water "on the fly". My last guess would have been a compressor house for an electro-pneumatic interlocking, not sure if there was ever a tower or interlocking at that location.

I like your first guess the best so far - see the latest "Bee Line" about Quinters Bridge, the map on page 7 has a rectangle labeled "Ruins Battery Vault." Don't know the scale on the map, but it looks similar in size to the vault in Skillman. It is rather sizable - I'd guess about 5 feet x 10 feet x 3 feet deep- and the pipes are about 3-4 inches in diameter. Did they make battery vaults that big?? The battery vault in this picture is much smaller:

http://www.alpharail.net/corp/cowcreek/cowcreek2.htm

I'll have to check it out closer the next time I go there.

Looks like (educated guess) a foundation and underground electrical access for a signal or relay shed, based on the capped-off electrical conduits. The concrete itself is definitely World War One era. I don't have ETT's that old, but was there any sort of interlocking or tower there at one time in the early 4-track (pre-1930's) era? I would think that for fluid traffic control given old traffic volume, especially since there was a good volume of B&O traffic as well, something would be needed between Trent and WX (Weston Manville) towers, much like a less busy version of Midway on the NEC. Maybe someone with a 20's or 30's era ETT can dig up more...Hope this helps!

There were at least three towers between West Trenton and Westin-Manville. These would have been 'Belle' at Belle Mead, 'Hope' at Hopewell and 'Glen' at Glenmore (Pennington). Given the spacing of the other towers, I suppose it's possible that there was once an interlocking at Skillman as well. The reason I thought of possible track pans and a pump house is due to the proximity to the creek, although I believe the Reading had pans at Yardley so it would be unlikely that a second installation would be that close.