Abandoned rail

[Trainguy76]

That is amazing, good storytelling too.

[qrfan3]

Ditto on Alex & Chris comments...one of the best threads I've followed and enjoyed in a while....
You done a lot of foot work....maybe a silica sand and gravel small shortline route down to the river area for barges in the making there Bill ?.....

[styckx]

Thanks all! I always knew tracks ran through Millville, I just never knew it was all part of that abandoned section I explored. Also never knew it was a shortline.

From my reading that shortline runs from the initial set of hoppers I found (near the dirt road) which is part of a silca/sand company, up to a transfer/yard where it's part of the Conrail Shared Assets line, then CSX takes things from there. So that little shortline runs all the little back industry buried in the area to basically hand it off to CSX.

Their wiki also backs up your thoughts also.

The W&W is exclusively a freight line with the majority of its freight supplied by the quarry of its parent company, Unimin, in Gore. In New Jersey, the W&W also serves Unimin sand interests and some grain traffic.

Interesting read. They have survived through times when most of these old lines were eaten up by the big boys, and they're actually growing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester ... n_Railroad

All and all, I had a blast exploring and retracing the now abandoned section except the bastard horseflies. I would love to walk the old line into the forests but between the bugs, ticks, and horseflies.. No thanks ;)

From nothing, to abandoned, to an operating shortline. Fun travels!

[pikehkr]

Where the heck is Millville?

Great find, great story! Reminds me of getting stuck in the woods of Batsto and going horseback riding with my Sister. Those flies are not right.

Will we be seeing some repaints in WW colors soon?

pikehkr

[ex-railwayman]

You're a regular Sherlock Holmes, Bill. All that sneeking around and hours sitting waiting in the car bore a lot of fruit at the end of the day, I bet you were as pleased as punch to see 3 locos in such pristine condition and knowing the fact that part of the line is still in use today. Well done young man.

So, now you have a new route to build and locomotives to reskin accordingly, you'd better get cracking then.....

Cheerz. ex-railwayman.

[dejoh]

http://www.chs.com/railsteel.html


Here's a company I do truck lettering and signs for.
They are always pulling up old rail lines. They cover the whole
USA, and I have seen their to-do list. Most of the abandoned lines are on a waiting list to be pulled up
with a 2-3 year wait.

[styckx]

I might, might not do a repaint. I don't own Dicky Jims GP9 but would do David B's GP7. Might, might not. I paint whatever grabs my attention at the moment. :)

Millville is in South Jersey.

I understand the point of yanking up old rail, it is very useful and a complete waste sitting there. On the other hand I hate rail trails. Something about seeing an abandoned set of tracks is more pleasing to the eyes in a nature sense to me. Once great machines rolled down those rails, and nature is reclaiming what was taken from it. I also realize 90% of the world doesn't feel this way and a nice trail is very appealing and more useful.

I want pictures of this abandoned section in use. I'll probably have to go to the nearest historical society or something for that. Just surprised at the lack of photos of this particular area. That set of tracks though is the Vineland Secondary which runs all the way to Camden New Jersey, and is the set of tracks just a few blocks down from my house. My city has 3 different lines converging into one track, which Conrail has centered a signal yard around.

As far as route building? I had already started modeling my area once and it transformed into something entirely different but the start was based off the above google earth image. I haven't really touched it for awhile. Pike might vaguely remember this project himself.



It started off normal enough.



Then I got into creating some insane test track and various other things that weren't prototypical at all.

[arizonachris]

LOL, Sty, you sure that isn't "Roller Coaster Tycoon"

[styckx]

Out randomly driving around doing some random photography I stumbled across this.








Crappy day for photography though. Sun sucked, only went out for an hour.. Little OT but these were the only two salvageable shots I got out of my little trip. Then after a trip through photoshop.. (photography is my second hobby)

[bsrrco]

possibly an electric winch type car puller, we have one at the feed mill that my company owns. The railroad pushes the loaded cars to the end of the siding, then leaves them. The person in charge of unloading attaches the cable, then pulls them to the other end of the siding as they are unloaded. When everything is empty they pick em up. Usually it takes a few days to empty them all.

[Csxgp38-2]

Might be a base from an old signal? Possibly an old electric switch motor?

[johnmckenzie]

Lovely story, thanks for sharing!

I remember as a little boy my mates and I used to walk along the trackbeds of closed railway lines, Dr Beeching ensured there were lots of those in Britain...

Never found any traces of track, just a disused mine and LOTS of walking!!

[AzureWX]

Part of the old Seaboard S-Line between Richmond and Petersburg used to run about a block from my house. I'll try to grab some photos, there's a lovely city park where the tracks used to cross Swift Creek.