Delaware and Raritan River Railroad-General Discussion

North at DCS PAT 12:44 PM

ROOSEVELT is somewhere on the NWS Earle property.

PAT is at Patterson Ave in Red Bank.

Bracdude, your twice-a-week location reports are much appreciated! It is now obvious that you cannot be viewing this train personally at each location, so would you be willing to tell us how you obtain this important data?


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Your welcome for the reports. They call out the DCS stations on the scanner so I just post the time I hear them call at whatever station they are at whenever I’m not out seeing them myself. Also got people here and there I know who tell me where the trains at.

Adelphia Road as of 10 minutes ago. Tracks are ballasted and tamped up until about 900-1000 feet from the road.

A couple of pages ago, Operation Toy Train was mentioned...

Micro-Trains is doing three of the cars in N and Z Scale. They have to use "stand in" body styles but I think this is a cool idea.

This example link should work for a while, but not permanently... Note that the Pre-Order window has closed but this should still be available via larger MTL dealers once it becomes available in November 2023.

https://micro-trains.com/index.php?rout ... ct_id=4894

Rosevelt MP 45.8
see: http://raildata.railfan.net/cnj/homecnj.html
scroll to New Jersey Southern Branch on the left
Rosevelt yard is inside the fence, connection to the Southern is long gone.

Those might become available at The Model Railroad Shop (actual name of the store) in Piscataway. I think they are an MTL dealer.

@NY&LB thanks for that. Forgot exactly where it was just knew it was out there.

HazzanDan wrote: ↑Wed Jul 05, 2023 10:27 am Now THAT is a new location for many of us. Where is DCS Roosevelt, please?


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Roosevelt's on the Southern where the Earle RR passes over. Passing siding used to be there at one time long gone with the northern Earle interchange. Till a few years ago there'd always be someone on the Earle bridges taking pictures.

Bracdude181 wrote: ↑Wed Jul 05, 2023 1:35 pm Those might become available at The Model Railroad Shop (actual name of the store) in Piscataway. I think they are an MTL dealer.

@NY&LB thanks for that. Forgot exactly where it was just knew it was out there.

Just make sure to ask Warren, He only orders MT sets on Request.

IIRC, the bridge over the Southern on 33/34 (if that is the same bridge you are talking about, @AceMacSD) used to have a sign that denoted that Blue Comet passed under it. This is going back to the 30's/40's of course, but in a couple of books I have, "Railroads of Monmouth County" and "The New Jersey Central's Blue Comet," there is a picture of this sign. I will try to find it and get a picture of it.

In addition, when was the last *weapons* shipment into Earle? It's been said that the last time Earle received massive amounts of anything was during Vietnam, and I know the last time Earle got anything period, it was some new engines and new boxcars for their railroad. I am curious to know, when was the last time any sort of ordinance came in. Someone may have answered this question before, but I don't know.

It’s possible Earle got cars of gunpowder in the mid 2000s but I’m not certain. Last shipment was two genset engines delivered by Conrail in spring 2014.

How many of you know the story of when there was a mixup of shipments between Earle and Nestle in Freehold? Where Nestle got a boxcar full of weapons and Earle got a car full of chocolate?

I'd assume that Earle last got their weapon shipments during the Cold War. Since the end of the Cold War, any war the United States has fought has been low-intensity conflicts where the military overwhelmingly had the upper hand in combined arms (aka fighting insurgents with AK-47s, and not the entire mechanized Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies), and did not need massive amounts of ordinance, like 'dumb' bombs, artillery shells, etc; mostly just needed small arms ammunition and 'smart' bombs/missiles (which IIRC Earle does not deal with either of those) for surgical strikes where the military wants to avoid as many civilian casualties as possible.

Now, say the War in Ukraine ramps up or the United States needs to go rescue Taiwan, you're probably going to need massive amounts of ordinance again. Especially for the ships in the case of the latter, which is what Earle deals directly in.

I've also never heard that story of Nestle and Earle's shipments being mixed up. Sounds like an urban legend to me, but I'd believe it, especially if it happened during the days of the NYC and the PRR merging into Penn Central, which was a logistical nightmare.

It happened very early on in the Penn Central days. Earle got a car of chocolate, Nestle got a boxcar full of guns and ammo. They didn’t even know until they opened the car!

What’s funny is what happened afterwards when both cars reached their proper destinations. They found the military took some of the chocolate out of the Nestle car LMAO

Bracdude181 wrote: ↑Wed Jul 05, 2023 9:05 pm It happened very early on in the Penn Central days. Earle got a car of chocolate, Nestle got a boxcar full of guns and ammo. They didn’t even know until they opened the car!

What’s funny is what happened afterwards when both cars reached their proper destinations. They found the military took some of the chocolate out of the Nestle car LMAO

Nestle factory in freehold has only made coffee…

Have they? I must’ve gotten the places confused then. Haven’t told the story in a while. My bad.