Toys R Us traffic on the M&E?

So anyone know if or when another train will pass south of Route 46 on the High Bridge Branch??
It is very sad to see rusted rail everytime I go past that line!

Toys 'R' Us downsizing will not help, but it also depends on if Target will remain in business. Other that that, there aren't much potential customers on the south end.

The weeds are growing 3 feet tall by the Hillside Ave grade crossing near the IHOP. The weeds are almost as high down by Carey road, and in Flanders by the fire house. I always get nervous when the track gets in that condition.

X4401 wrote:The weeds are growing 3 feet tall by the Hillside Ave grade crossing near the IHOP. The weeds are almost as high down by Carey road, and in Flanders by the fire house. I always get nervous when the track gets in that condition.

Don't get too nervous!! Life is too short to get upset about something like this. Yes, it is sad to see 1 customer close down and another switch to trucks, but that is way it goes sometimes.

I wouldn't worry about it. Look at the Chester Branch. It was in even worse shape than the High Bridge. Now it has another customer getting ready to come online, and they're rebuilding it.

There's still hope

Toys R Us isn't doing too well biz wise. If you want to know why go into their stores and look at prices. I went in their to buy something. They wanted $75 and directly across the street Walmart wanted $55. I brought this up to management who said "sorry, we don't match competitors prices" with an attitude. When the competition directly across the street is 25% cheaper and you refuse to budge, its not gunna be too long until you have a for lease sign on your empty store.

carajul wrote:Toys R Us isn't doing too well biz wise. If you want to know why go into their stores and look at prices. I went in their to buy something. They wanted $75 and directly across the street Walmart wanted $55. I brought this up to management who said "sorry, we don't match competitors prices" with an attitude. When the competition directly across the street is 25% cheaper and you refuse to budge, its not gunna be too long until you have a for lease sign on your empty store.

I'm surprised their Rockaway Mall stores haven't gone out of business yet with both Target and Wal-Mart not that far from it. The ACME at Rockaway Mall closed last year because of slow business or something relating either to the "Expanded Grocery Section" in the Target or the Shop-Rite on Route 15 and the McDonalds closed a few months ago while I'm on the topic of the Rockaway Mall.

And if you move your prices downward to try to compete with the massive purchasing power and distribution infrastructure of Walmart, you can just as quickly find yourself out of business.

That's why so many small business owners don't like Walmart.

Oh well that's the way the free market works. In my town Walmart has grocery stores called "Neighborhood Markets" and they opened across the street from the huge grocery stores (Pathmark, Shop Rite, Albertsons, etc). In every case the large grocery stores are all out of biz. Its strange seeing these huge 60,000sf buildings 'for lease'.

Now I'd love it if there were rail spurs into those WalMarts!!!

I don't really want to get into a free market argument so:

Walmart is not a very big supporter of rail transit. When I asked about the truck-heavy logistics system the answerer said the company was much more concerned with on-time deliveries than anything else. No store manager likes seeing empty spaces on the shelf and rail deliveries (of the carload variety) are notoriously unreliable.

Florida East Coast's intermodal system is apparently a big exception to the rule, with Walmart trailers being hauled regularly on their trains. FEC runs a pretty tight ship, though.

I would doubt if Toys R Us survives too much longer, so the M&E had best find another source of revenue for that line. The Sakrete plant in Kenvil is closed and hadn't seen a railcar in decades, anyway. The only other potential source of traffic I could see is the brick place near to Route 10 in Succassunna.

SemperFidelis wrote:
I would doubt if Toys R Us survives too much longer, so the M&E had best find another source of revenue for that line. The Sakrete plant in Kenvil is closed and hadn't seen a railcar in decades, anyway. The only other potential source of traffic I could see is the brick place near to Route 10 in Succassunna.

Yup, and now with Target in Flanders apparently "closed up" there are no longer any freight trains south of Route 10 on the High Bridge Branch.

Sort of on topic:

While I like Flemington and the BR&W's operation down there, I truly wish the operation in Chester had been successful.

Sadly, I think there's really very little hope for anything happening on this line anywhere in the near future. There's just no industrial base left to support in that part of the state/county. After CNJ became Conrail, there was really very little reason for the line to exist beyond the service offered to local customers, anyway.

Heck, the rail's in place on this line. Why not upgrade it and have it act as another spur/extension of the Montclair/Boonton Line? Though very few trips on NJ Transit are car competitive (in terms of travel time) I would think that at least few daily trains in and out would be well patronized.

Just because there aren't boxcars at Toys R Us doesn't mean things are dead and like I said in another thread, a lot of the trailers going to Flanders come from E-Port and South Kearny.

The company is actually doing quite well and released earnings today.

dano23 wrote:Just because there aren't boxcars at Toys R Us doesn't mean things are dead and like I said in another thread, a lot of the trailers going to Flanders come from E-Port and South Kearny.

The company is actually doing quite well and released earnings today.

Well, then perhaps Morris County dropped the ball on this one?? I seem to recall that Toys was supposed to get direct "rail service" directly to the facility as per the "contract agreements" with the County of Morris as they own the High Bridge Branch and NOT M&E... I have a hard time faulting M&E for this as they don't own the line, but were contracted out to serve the customers...Maybe I'm entirely wrong.

Maybe I could write a letter to Gene Feyl and ask him what the "problem" is with Toys and why they only use NS via intermodel.

They are contracted to provide the service, not arrange the logistics on behalf of Toys R Us and its suppliers.