Delaware and Raritan River Railroad-General Discussion

See the small thing between the two track machines? That’s what they’ve been ballasting with so far. My dimensions were off. It’s actually kinda small…

These hopper style, 4 wheel push cars are commonly used by contractors when building new RR. They can hook to a ballast tamper or any other self propeller maintenance vehicle with a towbar that bolts at either end. Ive also seen (not here tho) high rail dump trucks used to dump ballast on tracks...

Ties are down, Adelphia to Southard except for last 100 ft. Track laid for about (guess) 300 yards Adelphia towards Southard. This stretch is moving fast.

Track alignment machine working Prestone switch - Okerson Rd.

Bags of hardware placed along ROW Fairfield - Yellowbrook Rds.

All ties down except last 50 ft or so, Adelphia - Southard. Rails down to within a couple hundred yards of Southard. Middle section steel ties.

Good progress.

Living in Farmingdale and walking Main St then down to Farmingdale Apts then on the old PRR tracks and back to southard Ave for many years. Why is the new Main line from Adelphia to Southard Ave running next to the old main line? It might be different location the whole way(dont know).

Picture looking towards Southard Ave, Farmingdale. Old Main on left and new on right

Maybe they will be using the old main as a siding or something?

I didn’t even know that was still there! Will be interesting to see if they do anything with it.

I walked back up to Southard Ave and asked a worker why they did not use old main line. He said to straiten the line going over Marsh Bog Brook Bridge. The original main line from Freehold turned out to the right to go over the Bridge then turned back to left to old main line. My thought is that in 1912 they replaced wooden trestle bridge with concrete but could not center it.(for some reason) They have now done it

So are they not gonna use the bridge that’s there? I will say that bridge is questionable. I can see them replacing the tracks though. Last train on that portion was in 2008 with NS 3026 and 8 cars and at that time it was bad enough that they had to absolutely crawl over that stretch.

Yes they are apparently re-using the bridge. The change in the roadbed alignment was to remove a zig, probably put there when they installed the concrete bridge and removed the old wood one (1912?)

There was a line in the RFP about a change in track alignment on that stretch, but I did not understand at the time the purpose (not having been around in 1912, and not knowing about the zig). Glad they had a wide enough ROW to be dual-tracked.

Bracdude181 wrote:So are they not gonna use the bridge that’s there? I will say that bridge is questionable. I can see them replacing the tracks though. Last train on that portion was in 2008 with NS 3026 and 8 cars and at that time it was bad enough that they had to absolutely crawl over that stretch.

Do you have a fear of bridges? You seem to have a problem with just about every single one of them.

CR7876 wrote:

Bracdude181 wrote:So are they not gonna use the bridge that’s there? I will say that bridge is questionable. I can see them replacing the tracks though. Last train on that portion was in 2008 with NS 3026 and 8 cars and at that time it was bad enough that they had to absolutely crawl over that stretch.

Do you have a fear of bridges? You seem to have a problem with just about every single one of them.

Really wish my old rr.net colleagues were around some days .

I'd hate to hear what he thinks of the 25th Street Viaduct in Philly...

How about the Wemrock Road overpass in Manalapan? Any issues with that?


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Thanks for the info, CharlieL. A straight alignment is always optimal. I'm really impressed by how this railroad is being rebuilt.