Totowa railroad tracks.....

sullivan1985 wrote:I think it all happened in April of 1963 as part of the Main Line reroute project.

The Erie Main was ripped out of Passaic in April of 63 and all traffic was rerouted to Paterson over the DL&W Boonton. So I would guess it was all done around the same time as one large project.

You're in the money. Abandoned 11-06-63 according to Sheppard. That's prob the formal approval date.

Al Holleuffer wrote:The track that crosses Rte. 46 is privately owned by the Passaic Valley Water Commision, not NS.
Al Holleuffer

Absolutely correct.

I visited the Totowa town hall today and examined the tax maps for the affected area. Came up with some other surprises, too.

1) PVWC owns the trackage easement from a point 250 feet south of Lackawanna Avenue south to the end of track.

2) NJDOT owns the easement from the PVWC portion north to the wye, and east to Bomont, and east of the end of track for another 400-500 feet where it triangles into the highway. The tax officer thought the state may have bought the section east of Union Blvd "sometime in the 1960s" which is consistent with the abandonment / highway building.

3) NJDOT also owns the rail easement from the wye west to at least Union Blvd. I didn't want to burden the officials, but this suggests NJDOT may own much more, and maybe all, of the Totowa Industrial track

4) The City of Newark has an underground easement for pipelines running under the wye, under route 46 by the rail crossing, and down toward the PVWC.

Just to concur with some others, I worked at Dragoco from 92- 94 and saw several drills on the water branch from my window. The last time I walked around over there (last fall) the switch to the water branch (western leg of the wye) which is under the Union Ave overpass had just been removed.

A mile or so west is the Totowa Industrial area which has lots of interesting and still intact trackage.

If theres going to be a hike, count me in.

Jim

An aerial photo of the Totowa water plant appeared in the paper recentlyin regards to the suspected murder that occured there. In the photo it appears the sidings are still intact. I also drove past there and noticed some sort of hand truck on the tracks just beyond the fence inside the facility.