Toms River Industrial Track

Does anyone have pictures of this rail line? Where does it currently end? Does anyone have photos of the RT. 37 Grade Crossing? Are there any photos of the customers who used this track?



Thank You

Eric

This line originates at the switch in Lakehurst off the Southern Secondary and ran over to Toms River and then turned south to eventually go down to Barnegat. The remnant of the line, the Toms River Industrial branch, currently terminates at with the siding that crosses Rt 37 to Ciba-Geigy. That plant has been closed since around 1992 and is a Superfund site. The other couple of customers consisted of Builders General (lumber yard) and Suburban Propane. Builders General stopped taking deliveries a couple of years ago at this site and receives lumber via truck from their Freehold location. Suburban Propane was left as the only sporadic customer, but I have not heard of any deliveries out that way since around April last year. I don't know if they are still a customer since we are 1/2 through the heating season and one would have thought they would have required a shipment by now.

If you go to this link, you can see a picture of the junction of the Toms River Industrial with the Southern Secondary as it relatively looks today:

http://octrainguy.com/lakehurst-view1.html

For a nice history of the Toms River/Barnegat Branch that eventually was truncated down to the Toms River industrial, use this link:

http://octrainguy.com/barnegatbranch.html

I highly recommend OCTrainguy's web site for an excellent history with outstanding pictures of rail through Ocean County. OCTrainguy is also a poster on this Forum.

http://www.thebluecomet.com is a great link with pictures describing all of the CNJ. For some pictures of the operations through Toms River, go to this link: http://www.thebluecomet.com/cnjsoudiv.html.

If you use the search function for Chemical Plant, it will take you a little more than halfway down the page to a couple of photos of the CNJ servicing the Toms River Chemical Plant in the early 1970's before it was bought by Ciba-Geigy.

For what it's worth, any interested railfans of the area should take pictures of the grade crossing and lights while they are still there. The only reason they still exist after the closing of Ciba is that trains drilling Builders General had to pull across Rt 37 before backing into the lumber yard, due to the close proximity of the switch to the highway. Now that BG is not getting rail deliveries, who knows when the grade crossing could go. I've learned the hard way by never getting pictures of subjects I thought would be there "forever".