Jersey shore train stations

25Hz wrote:

ns3010 wrote:

NJTRailfan wrote:This should've stayed and NOT been replaced for a highway.

I would strongly have to disagree with that. Spend this weekend down the shore and you'll know what I mean.

Saturday morning, it took me twenty minutes to drive from Normandy Beach to Lavalette, when it normally takes about five (with two lanes in each direction). And no, I'm not looking forward to the Mantoloking merge later this afternoon...

While it would be awesome for me to be able to look out my bedroom window and see trains instead of Route 35 S, I would rather not spend my entire summer sitting in traffic on a two-lane 35...

You wouldn't be in traffic, people would take the train.......

In a perfect world, yes. In reality, most likely not.

As for me, I would definitely take the train when I needed to make a trip up home during the summer. However, it wouldn't be practical for day to day use when I need to go short distances. Taking the train to deliver a pizza probably wouldn't work out too well...

Back on topic, does anyone have links to more information about the line, specifically Bay Head-Seaside? I've always been interested in the line since my shore house is only 500 feet from it, but I've never been able to find a whole lot of information on it. Thanks in advance!

Frankly, who is to say that NJ 35 south of Mantoloking (meaning Ocean Avenue; West Central Avenue would be the former RR) would not have been widened anyhow if the P&LB were still in operation to this day…?

Most road traffic to/from Seaside still uses the GSP and NJ 37 anyhow. Having the double route through Lavallette et cetera is no help since it still narrows down to a two-lane highway in Bay Head.

For NS3010:

octrainguy's link http://octrainguy.com/PRRline.html
Seaside Park:http://www.seasideparknj.org/history/ scroll down to Seaside Park's Railroad Station

Aside from the Seaside Park fishing pier and the remnants of the ROW on the former causeway across Twilight Lake in Bay Head, another relic of the line exists in the water of Scow Ditch. Immediately alongside the east side of the footbridge that connects two parts of the Bay Head Yacht Club are the remains of the pier of the bridge on which the railroad crossed the Ditch. Last time I was there I think they were using it as a mooring. You can get in there by boat as long as it can clear the footbridge, which has maybe 5 or 6 feet of clearance. It's a public waterway and once under you can go as far as Bridge Ave. if your boat is small enough. Otherwise the footbridge at Mount St. will probably be the end.

Reviewed this thread just for fun, as I plan to be down in Bay Head later this month (before spending some quality time at Martell's tiki bar in Point Pleasant). The vast majority of my NYC friends take NJT to Point Pleasant in summer and do the easy walk to the beach. They go several times a month during the warm weather As the "train guy" in the group, I'm always asked why they don't "run the trains down to Seaside"... they were under the impression that the tracks simply looped and ended in Bay Head and that's the way it'd always been. "Wouldn't it be great if NJTransit extended the line to Seaside? I'd go there instead!". I actually hear that almost every time they head down the shore on the train. They are shocked when I explain the full extent to which the trains used to run and how it was all scaled back decades ago. To a non-railfan, they think it's the most logical thing in the world to simply extend the service. It sounds good in a romantic sense but when I explain they'd have to find room to run the tracks, they nod and say "Okay well at least it goes to Point Pleasant".
This came up recently as a lot of them were going to Red Bank after the holidays for lunch, dinner and shopping. A LOT of people take the train to the shore, especially the city folk who cannot or do not want to drive...

BTW- how often (if at all) do trains still use the Bay Head loop? Are they all push and pull or are there run-arounds?
Looking back at an entry from 2004, young nick11a answered this very question.

Shuttle trains usually go around the loop. When they reach Long Branch, the engineer swithches ends and drives the train to Bay Head, around the loop and back to LB etc.

Is that still the case?

Some trains take the loop, others pull straight in. I'm not sure which ones do which. I do know that trains for Hoboken are always in push mode, as the locomotive will be pointing "outward" (west) while parked at the Hoboken Terminal.

At one time trains sitting at Bay Head would all have their power looking toward Point Pleasant. Maybe that was from the days where power was fueled at the Bay Head terminal, and all engines would be sitting together. Trains would pull or push out as required.

One of the NJT guys here once said that shuttles would "usually" have the power pointed west toward Bay Head, but I don't think that's the case anymore.

I'm sure someone here can answer this better than I can.

Anything that is in between runs as a shuttle or even turning into a shuttle from a through train from HOB uses the loop.

Great new thread. In the interests of obscurity I will add one more pax station. It was called Berkeley and was little more than a shed when the Pennsy first constructed the line. Check the SSP Website for the Centennial publication as the photo of the oldest home in town, still located on "i" street and the stop can be seen in the distance.

Around 2001 when they rebuilt the "fishing pier" at 14th Avenue, in reality the last remnants on the entry into SSP of the trestle that spanned Barnegat Bay after the a "swing span" that was located nearer to the "Barnegat Pier" adjacent to the rebuilt after Sandy Water's Edge restaurant, and before that the Stern Light, when they rebuilt the trestle with Green Acres money, that too was destroyed in Sandy, there was a wooden passenger car uncovered, trucks and all.

For decades it had been part of a dwelling next to the trestle/pier, however you would have never known it, unless you knew it. A foot firmly placed in my butt for never having documented it, but i am sure pictures exist. I would love to know how it came to be there, since it must have been there before abandonment.

I have always viewed the decision of the Mayor and Council at the time to just have it hauled away instead of organizing a community effort to restore and display it, just another indication of indifference to Ocean County rail history, if not downright determination to obliterate any trace of it, more on that in another post, especially the mysterious fire of 1946 that started in the middle of the trestle in the middle of the winter. Once it was gone it made abandonment much easier. You see railroads will do whatever they have to protect profit margins not the public interest.

The so-called "Lindbergh Engine" of newsreel fame which is seeing a restoration at the Pennsy Museum spent its last days on the Camden and Atlantic division crossing the bridge and trestle and then heading north to what used to be called Bay Head Junction. Though the fat cats saw to changing that name for the sake of property values, a piece of the original line can be found in the fragmities adjacent the parking lot in Bay Head after it crossed the trestle which became fill over Twilight Lake.

Well anyway. Here is a shot of the station at Ocean Gate similar to the private home long 35 south that was the Lavalette station. The park station as was said is also a private home in town, though now between 7th and 8th on Central.

Sorry, Berkeley was listed. (Yikes the Board bull will be runnin this hobo out of the railyard again).

The old wooden circa 1880s PB-series passenger cars at Seaside were almost saved. Work by both the NJ Museum of Transportation / Pine Creek RR of Allaire and the URHS was attempted. The building surrounding the cars was dismantled and the cars exposed. They weren't in good shape at all, but movement was looked into. A heavy hauler was called in to look things over. The cars would never make the trip to anywhere. A new home was never found for them. And the costs of rigging and transport,the possibility of them falling apart while traveling down the road, plus NJ highway permit red tape, all but spelled the doom of these cars.

There were three in all.

Sadly, you can't save everything.

Thanks.GSC. I appreciate the follow-up. Wow three of them, never knew that. I guess we should be thankful for what does remain the work of our enterprising boy scouts notwithstanding for both the Barnegat Branch turntable and the Tuckerton turntable. Its just that and I know that it takes money why is a camelback on display in Baltimore and not at the terminal in Jersey City? No tracks anymore to the terminal? That was obviously not an impediment to UP in moving Big Boy 4014. But thats a company aware of the pr value. Can't imagine pr value is even in Conrail's vocabulary.

On a "technicality" basis, two pieces of equipment still exist that actually ran on the Tuckerton RR. PRR D16sb #1223 now at Strasburg was one of the preferred locos to run on the Tuck and on LBI, lighter power for lighter rail and shorter trains. Also, PRR private car #3999, the Trenton, still exists in the carbarn at Allaire at the Pine Creek RR. It has never been in great shape, as it sat on piling for years as a residence, but it still exists. The 3999 was used on inspection trains as well as ferrying division foremen around.

On a one-time basis, Blue Comet cars ran on Tuckerton for a CNJ fantrip in 1939(?).

That is good to know and has been saved to file. Question. If I were after a tax map level detail of the junction at Whiting showing the detail of the facilities of each of the three RRs where would you suggest I go for that, with me telling you it would be for a 3x3 ft representation framed and under glass above my train board? Funny thing is I once had those from the OC Planning Dept. from a friend there of the entire Tuckerton ROW. The names of the landholders where the ROW passed through a veritable history of the Revoluntionary War, with many, many loyalists but names likelike Anthony Reckless too. They were located in her half of the house unfortunately.

Good question for a period tax map. I hope someone here knows how to acquire one.

There's a track plan pictured in John Brinckmann's "The Tuckerton Railroad" book. I've tried to take a picture of it with my phone, but it doesn't come out very well.

The track plan features both the original and the improved track plans.