by David Hutchinson
If you are coming out of the Mall, heading towards Woodbridge Ave/Main Street, you will come up to a traffic light. Directly across the street and slightly to the left is the Heresite building. There used to be a gate in their cyclone fence to the right of the building.... this gate was for the tracks going down to the clay pits. The Historic Aerials site now has topographical maps going way back, if you ever want to research track diagrams. The LV used to come to the wye in Metuchen to service Premium Plastics. Their siding came off the west leg of the wye. In the 1960's, Oakite ( the old Celotex facility) was the last industry before South Plainfield. Oakite had two tracks. Don't remember when the flyover was last used. It had catenary on it, by the way. The few parallel tracks around Plainfield Avenue were by the old Kilmer Tower. They allowed the PRR to get back onto the Main or go to the flyover. They also continued down to the LV/RDG. A lot of PRR MUs were used as trains to take the troops to Jersey City. As a side note, Metuchen on the Port Reading had two private industries. A coal yard trestle at the foot of Christol Street where there is now a park and a feed/cinders dealer at Christol and Ross Avenue. Metuchen had a small runaround track that was used for the shifter and/or MOW equipment, as opposed to the three passing sidings for full length trains. I was told that the steam coal trains were about 50 cars in length which would make maybe 10 or more trains on the branch back in the days.
