What was the customer on Murray Road?

Hi,

I was driving around lost attempting to get to route 10 and I took a wrong turn through a warehouse area on Murray Road in East Hanover. The place appeared to have a number of old sidings which branch off to a series of old warehouses. None of them appeared to be current rail customers, not a single boxcar to be seen. Some of the crossings had trucks parked on them or close enough to foul the tracks at least. A check of Bing maps confirms that this does connect to the M+E Whippany branch. So my question is what customer was this built for? It appears to have been quite an investment in its time. I remember Whippany residents talking about paper mills being prolific along this line, but this doesn't have any of the trademark environmental super-fund signs indicating that it couldn't have been a paper mill.

The track(s) you saw on Murry Road is the former Vornado / old Two Guys complex..........The Vornado Spur was built around 1971, this included a shiny new bridge over the Whippany River and there were traffic signals installed at that time, now OOS or might be removed?

It must have been ten years since a customer was last served there.....now the M&E stores equipment on the branch that can be seen from the Whippany main line...........sad there is no interest for customers here with the buildings / rail and highway location?

I remember seeing boxcars on all of the sidings around the time the Home Depot opened up over there. I think that was the early 90s. After about a year or two, the boxcars stopped showing up and the branch slowly started growing over.

There was an M&E owned FL9 or two stored back there a few years ago and perhaps a coach or some other equipment too, but I'm not 100% on that.

I know at least one of the former warehouses is now almost entirely office space, but Vornado Properties or whoever the current owner is (the last I checked) still had "warehouse space" available at the site. The site would probably make a decent transload/distribution center due to its proximity to Route 10, Eisenhower Parkway, I-280 and I-287 (little longer hop to I-80). Traffic is kind of a mess on Route 10, though, even during the non-rush hours. Something like a cold storage warehouse would probably be a good fit as the population in a 10 mile radius of the site must be in the millions.

The Vornado spur was last used around 1991.

Thanks for the replies. The scale of the place and the length and number of the sidings really had me guessing.

I'm sure R36 is correct for regular service. It pretty well coincides with my hazy memories.

However, I would like to reiterate that there was an FL9 on the tracks only a few years ago. Doesn't really count, I know. When they were clearing brush I was sure hoping someone had moved in who needed service again.

SemperFidelis wrote: When they were clearing brush I was sure hoping someone had moved in who needed service again.

Thyey really love to fool you a lot like that!!!

SemperFidelis wrote:I'm sure R36 is correct for regular service. It pretty well coincides with my hazy memories.

However, I would like to reiterate that there was an FL9 on the tracks only a few years ago. Doesn't really count, I know. When they were clearing brush I was sure hoping someone had moved in who needed service again.

It actually derailed and I was able to watch them rerail it. There was also a delivery on a flat car after '91 (maybe 96 or 97). I believe it was something that was off-loaded onto a flat bed and trucked to Novartis.

As of the 22nd, the two FL9s (485 and 486) were still there.