Tag: Lakehurst NJ

The end of the line, for now

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With Conrail severing the former Central Railroad of NJ Southern Division mainline back in the late 1970s, and with rail customers switching to trucks, or not surviving the tough New Jersey marketplace, the present day Conrail Shared Assets Operations railroad decided that, with no future potential for rail-freight services, they would take the Toms River Industrial track, and the Southern Secondary out of service at MP65.9 by removing a section of rail in Lakehurst in June of 2009. The mainline extends south of this point to the sand pits in Woodmansie, NJ, and there was hope that the owner of the line south of Lakehurst would revive sand train service in 2006, and again in 2009, but those plans never materialized, and the line remains dormant. Unfortunately, in December of 2010, the end of the line would be moved further north to South Lakewood, NJ, and trains would be eliminated from Lakehurst altogether.

Here we see weekly local WPSA-31 sitting at the end of track marker, with a new crew onboard and getting ready to utilize the runaround track immediately behind the train. CSX 4423 has seen these rails before, starting life as Conrail 3338, built in June of 1978 by EMD. In a matter of minutes, the crew will position the locomotive on the opposite end of the train, and head north to Lakewood to drill the large lumber yard there; without the 4 to 10 carloads of inbound lumber every week, this line would have little chance of survival, so to the good people of Woodhaven Lumber, we say ‘thank you’.

Image recorded September 18, 2009.

Conrail Southern Secondary CSX 4423 exCNJ Lakehurst NJ

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In Lakehurst, NJ, rails are quiet for first time in 149 years

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It is the end of an era as Conrail Shared Assets Symbol WPSA-31, with NS 5281 (EMD GP38-2, ex-Conrail 8078, built as Penn Central 8078 in February 1973) in charge, sits on the runaround track in Lakehurst, NJ, for the final time. The railroad was first built into Lakehurst when the Raritan & Delaware Bay RR came to town in 1861, as competition to the already established Camden & Amboy RR. Difficult financial times for the Raritan & Delaware Bay found itself reorganized into the New Jersey Southern Railroad in 1869, and 10 years later, in 1879, the line was acquired by The Central Railroad of New Jersey (CNJ) as their Southern Division Mainline. For the following 97 years, the CNJ moved passengers (until 1957) and freight on the line from northern NJ to extreme southern NJ, until the formation of Conrail in 1976.

Conrail severed the Southern Division in 1978, with the southern terminus now here in Lakehurst, and referred to this line (now Red Bank to Lakehurst) as the Southern Secondary. The line remained in this configuration until December, 2010, when a new runaround track was built in Lakewood, NJ, some 5 miles to the north, to cut travel time and save money for new operator Conrail Shared Assets Operations (so designated after Conrail was split up between CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern RR in 1999). With the new runaround completed just 2 weeks before this photo, it would be put into operation on the following run of SA-31 the very next week.

It is with great sadness that I officially report that, for the first time in 149 years, there will be no trains in Lakehurst, New Jersey.

Image recorded December 3, 2010.

Conrail Shared Assets Symbol WPSA-31 sits on the runaround track in Lakehurst, NJ, for the final time

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Conrail wayfreight prepares for run-around on famed ‘Blue Comet’ route

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Conrail wayfreight WPSA-31, with new crew on board, prepares to make a reverse move and run-around its train for the pull back north to Lakewood. The train is sitting at the current terminus of Conrail’s Southern Secondary in Lakehurst, NJ. This is the former Southern Division mainline of the Central Railroad of New Jersey, route of the famed CNJ ‘Blue Comet’ passenger trains of the ’40s and ’50s to Atlantic City, and host to 70 and 80 car freight trains from north to south Jersey until the formation of Conrail in 1976.

There are actually no remaining customers on this end of the line; the crew utilizes the run-around track here to reverse direction to serve Woodhaven Lumber on a trailing point spur in Lakewood, the largest customer on the line. Conrail Shared Assets Operations is using CSX 4423 (ex-CR 3338, blt 6/78) for todays run on a beautiful fall day.

Image recorded September 18, 2009.

Conrail wayfreight prepares for run-around on famed 'Blue Comet' route

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