CMSL Cape May (NJ) Seashore Lines Non-Passenger Operations

A tad late, but the weed spraying operation was a success. Can’t see any living weeds in the areas I’ve checked.

Bracdude181 wrote: ↑Thu Sep 15, 2022 12:34 pm A tad late, but the weed spraying operation was a success. Can’t see any living weeds in the areas I’ve checked.

Was up on diamond road 9/20 and while the weeds were brown they were still about two feet high.

The NJSL line between Woodmansie and Lakehurst is in MUCH better shape than the entire rest of the Southern, yet it has not seen a train since it's essential rebuild. Very odd...

JohnFromJersey wrote: ↑Fri Sep 23, 2022 8:08 pm The NJSL line between Woodmansie and Lakehurst is in MUCH better shape than the entire rest of the Southern, yet it has not seen a train since it's essential rebuild. Very odd...

The problem is Lakewood to Lakehurst. Conrail was unwilling to reopen it. Now NJSL at the mercy of C&D.

The grant info for C&Ds repairs of the Southern Secondary say something like “The purpose of this grant is to reopen Farmingdale to Freehold and re-establish a connection with NJSL in Lakehurst.”

I hear they will start running as soon as the connection is reopened. If that’s true then it’s just a matter of when said connection will be made.

Hopefully sooner rather than later. I’m certainly not the only one waiting (rather impatiently I might add!!) to see trains go past Lakewood once again.

There may be another problem there in that the sand cars may exceed NJT's weight limitation between Red Bank and South Amboy. Yet another reason to get Freehold-Farmingdale done.

@CharlieL I believe they were gonna get around that by only putting so much sand in each car. That being said, Farmingdale to Freehold would allow for fully loaded cars.

To my knowledge NJT did not raise an issue with the weight of the cars when NJSL and Conrail originally approached them about these trains, provided they did not exceed the 263k limit on the Coast Line.

I hear they're hiring conductors and engineers at the Seashore Lines.

Sounds like something is going to happen soon then. I wonder how much NJSL will pay conductors and engineers, and what the days/hours would be like? Would they train someone fresh off the street and fresh out of college?

https://g.co/kgs/YAuTK6

Link to the job posting

Thanks Chris. They say they want at least one year experience but sources in the field tell me their looking for two plus years experience.

The railroad crossing lights are being installed on Union Ave in Lakehurst today. Poles for what look like pedestrian crossing gates are up with another pole being assembled on top of a trailer. All WCH equipment…

WoW! Hard to believe. LKike they are actually planning for trains to run to Lakehurst....

pdtrains wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 3:53 pm WoW! Hard to believe. LKike they are actually planning for trains to run to Lakehurst....

This was supposed to be done earlier but the pandemic delayed everything around here. The fact that Conrail never reopened the damn connection didn’t help.

Dang. So this isn't prophetic of things to come.

SemperFidelis wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 4:17 pm Dang. So this isn't prophetic of things to come.

Maybe. As I said the pandemic delayed this and any other upcoming work. (We might see them repair the siding in spring I’ve been hearing) The fact that the connecting railroad is no longer Conrail also means anything Seashore Lines was planning to do with them is probably out of the window too.

I still think Conrail should’ve just handed this line over to NJSL when they wanted it gone in the first place instead of waiting 5-10 years then handing it off to someone else. Now anything out of Lakehurst has to go through two separate railroads just to access the national network.