CSAO Southern Secondary Archives - Page 2 of 4

A mid-winters day dream

Conrail

In the Northeast, in January, one never knows what Mother Nature has in store for you. Following the extremely harsh winters of 2010 and 2011, the 2012 season was quite mild with little snow, and few days below the freezing mark. It is perhaps too early to remark upon the winter of 2013, but so far it has been very favorable, with none of the snow and ice concerns that can turn travel into a nightmare. With the temperature hovering at 48 degrees Fahrenheit this day, and with the forecast of 58 degrees two days from now, it is safe to say the local community is enjoying January just fine, thank you very much.

With a very healthy 8-car train, this photo shows Conrail Shared Assets local SA-31 trundling her way through Shrewsbury, NJ, on the Southern Secondary, led by ex-Conrail GP38-2 8278, a June 1979 graduate of the EMD assembly line in LaGrange, Illinois. Now appearing on your local line as CSX 2812, she appears to have been recently ‘shopped’, with upgraded air-conditioning and sporting a new paint job as well. The crew arriving well before sunset this week gives the photographer an opportunity to capture this train in the fantastic ‘low’ winter light, with the sun angle in the sky not as high as it is in the summer months. Of course, timing is everything, and on this day the beautiful mid-winter weather and soft light lends itself to the railfans ‘dream’, where location & conditions come together to create a wonderful scene of rural railroading in the crowded and hectic environs of central New Jersey.

Image recorded on January 10, 2013.

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Sunset on the Southern

Conrail

It is with great pleasure that I am able to share this photo with you. On October 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy devastated the coastline of New Jersey, and severly damaged the NJ Transit system, with some of the worst destruction along the NJ Transit North Jersey Coast Line, nearly severing the line below Woodbridge, NJ. The Conrail Southern Secondary is the former Central RR of NJ Southern Division mainline, beginning at Red Bank, NJ, and currently terminating in South Lakewood, NJ, with only a few customers along the line. Because the NJT trackage was out of service between Woodbridge and Red Bank, and no way to get freight from Browns Yard in Sayreville to Red Bank, the Southern was effectively disconnected from the outside world after the storm. With a nearly super-human effort from the NJT maintenance-of-way forces, the Coast line was opened for limited service just 10 days later, and operations would slowly regain normalcy over the ensuing weeks. Fortunately, because it is several miles west of the coast, the Southern sustained very little damage, and would survive yet another threat from Mother Nature.

In a view at sunset, we find Conrail Shared Assets Operations weekly local SA-31, with CSX GP40-2 4429 (ex-Conrail 3346, blt 3/79) working her way through the Borough of Shrewsbury, as she does every Thursday afternoon. There is only 1 regular customer on this 23 mile line, along with 2 others that see infrequent service, so to see a train on these rails that date back to the late 1850’s is a nice sight, and to see a train on a line that has experienced greatly diminished business and two Hurricanes in the past 2 years, and is still in service, is a wonderful occasion. Helping to ‘Restore The Shore’, it is good to see the railroads once again playing an important role, this time bringing much needed building materials to central Jersey for the restoration process.

Image recorded on December 13, 2012.

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Over the river and through the woods

Conrail

It’s not easy getting to Lakewood, NJ, by rail these days, but it can still be done; in fact, it’s done 52 times a year (barring a major weather event) by a Conrail Shared Assets Operations local based out of Sayreville, NJ. With line abandonments prevalent in the past 40 years due to the dwindling freight traffic in central New Jersey, the crew of train SA-31 must travel 6 miles east from Sayreville to South Amboy, where they will then enter the New Jersey Transit North Jersey Coast Line, when time and the numerous commuter trains occupying this important corridor will allow. Upon receiving permission from the NJT dispatcher, SA-31 will then travel south (timetable west) to Red Bank in about 35 minutes time (on a good day), and take the switch at the location of old BANK tower to enter the ex-Central Railroad of New Jersey Southern Division, now known as the Southern Secondary. Although the runaround track in south Lakewood is only 22 miles away, it will take the crew some 2 hours to get there, due to the 10mph speed limit they must endure as a result of track conditions on this little used line.

Here we see the train crossing the Navesink River under the catenary on the NJT ‘Coast Line’, as they enter Red Bank and prepare for the final leg of their journey to Lakewood. Even though Monmouth County is mostly residential in the 21st century, a good amont of the Southern Secondary runs ‘through the woods’ as it heads in a southwesterly direction towards Lakewood. An ex-Penn Central unit (GP38-2, ex-CR 8058, nee-PC 8058, blt 2/73) leads todays edition on yet another beautiful spring day in the northeast. No, 10 miles per hour is probably not fun for the crew, but superb weather should make it a bit more tolerable, as the conductor & engineer head for Ocean County’s largest lumber yard to deliver their train, and then prepare to head back to the friendly confines of Browns Yard.

Image recorded April 5, 2012.

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Sometimes a little luck goes a long way

Conrail

Every photographer knows that proper lighting is essential to a good photo, but situations don’t always develop the way you want them to, expecially outdoors. This is where luck enters into the equation. The train shown here is the regular mid-afternoon Thursday edition of Conrail local freight WPSA-31, or SA-31 for short. The train is pretty predictable, entering the Southern Secondary at Red Bank, NJ, between 2:00 and 4:00pm for the run south to Lakewood. The power is also somewhat predictable, as the origination point, Browns Yard in Sayreville, NJ, only hosts 4 locomotives at a time (three 4-axle units, and one 6-axle unit), so you will see one of the three GP units on this train. Of course, what is not predictable is the weather.

SA-31 left Sayreville under dark, cloudy skies, and chances were slim that conditions would improve in the 90 minutes that it would take the crew to reach the location of this photo in Shrewsbury, NJ. Thankfully, as the weather front moved east, a bit of sun broke through every few minutes, followed by a large cloud, followed by some sun, followed by a cloud. Upon arrival trackside in Shrewsbury, I thought I would have a 50-50 chance of grabbing a sunny shot, so I appealed to the ‘weather gods’ for any assistance that could be provided.

At exactly 2:27pm, somehow, someway, the clouds parted and the low, late Autumn sun shone brightly upon Norfolk Southern 5281, still resplendent in her ‘Conrail Quality’ Dress Blue scheme. NS 5281 is one of the elder locomotives on the roster, originally built for the PennCentral railroad back in February of 1973. Was it fate that sent this veteran locomotive to this lightly used secondary today? Was it good planning on my part to be in the right place at the right time? Did the weather gods actually help?

I don’t know, all I have to say is that, sometimes, a little luck goes a long way…….

Image recorded on November 5, 2010.

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The end of the line, for now

Conrail

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.

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