Delaware and Raritan River Railroad-General Discussion

Forest3670 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 21, 2022 12:34 pm Stopped next to Main Street , Farmingdale for twenty minutes then headed on there way. 12:57 pm

A set of wheels on the 4th car from the engines were locked up and were sliding on the tracks. Conductor fixed it and they went on their way.

I guess some idiot pulled the handbrake wheel while the train was at Woodhaven.

Nice picture Forest.

Bracdude181 wrote:Out of curiosity, has anyone in current management, or at any point after the split, worked for Penn Central before? A lot of my people told me previously that a prominent higher up in Conrail was a former Penn Central worker and that he was largely responsible for how bad Conrail North Jersey is.

Considering it's been over 46 years since Penn Central existed, you would need somebody who is over age 67 and started at age 21 or older.

Yeah, i know. Penn Central is still a Whipping Boy for everything that's happened in the last 40 years, but the reality is that anyone who worked for them for two or three years before it went out of business also spent over 40 years working elsewhere.... so not really sure why that would even be an issue this many years later.



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Current management is either non-craft or NS. I think the last of the Penn guys retired a few years ago and turned over the operation to a jitney driver.

You rarely see craft people moving to management because there's no incentive to do so. In a lot of cases, lower level supervisory staff earn less than the people they're supervising, and being salaried, they work more.

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All new Ties at the Mingamahone Brook Bridge in Farmingdale. At one point they had to deploy sand.

Nice to see they fixed that low spot next to the bridge. Maybe there is hope for the line north of there after all…

In other news, a friend tells me that some form of accident has taken place at the Whitesville rd crossing. Sounds like a car took the curve too fast and destroyed the two old relay boxes on the south side of the crossing. Friend mentioned the boxes were about 50 feet from where they were previously.

Might go look tomorrow if I can.

re: Whitesville Rd.
The vehicle that hit the boxes must have been really flying. I have taken that curve at well over 50 and no problem. Also the boxes were mounted on 18" tall concrete platforms.Driver most have been asleep and floored on the gas.

I'll need to drive by and check that out. If they were on an 18" high pad, there would be car parts all over the place. And if they were moved 50 ft they should be pretty crumpled. I'm thinkin (hoping really) prep work to reopen Lakehurst. Was just by there Friday, did not notice anything about the signal boxes.

I seem to recall those signal boxes are supposed to be, perhaps, 20 to 30 feet away from the road, made of cast iron and were fairly large. I'm sure that vehicle was pulverized. Hopefully the driver is ok.

@jrzwalker86 Those boxes would probably be replaced if C&D reopens to Lakehurst regardless, because of how they rebuild crossings. Weirdly I haven’t heard anything about this through the local media outlets, nor have I heard from them about the incident in Jamesburg a few days ago…

One of the two was knocked off it's base and is pretty smashed. The base also got turned over. The other is sitting there seemingly ok.
If I were to guess, a car ran the stop on Faraday rd, or got into the intersection and nailed it to avoid an oncoming car on Whitesville.
I did not walk it, just observed from Faraday.

JB-1 today has 1888 and 9 cars. Bigger train that usual. Normally the FIT sees a big drop by now…

Some businesses may be stocking up because of pending cost increases, pending rail strike possibility, or a possible shortage of diesel fuel. After all, freight rail is 100% reliant on diesel, and if there is a real shortage of heating fuel, which is almost identical to diesel, who will get the nod - rail freight, or keeping grandma from literally freezing to death.
The real kicker is a large percentage of petroleum crude and product is carried by - - - rail.

Ties have been marked for replacement on the FIT in Englishtown…

How likely is the Lakehurst-Lakewood connection to be opened up soon?