MIDDLETOWN AND NEW JERSEY RAILWAY

The 'Middletown & New Jersey Railroad' is one of two railroads left in the City of Middletown, New York; the other being its interchange partner, Norfolk Southern. The railroad operates one diesel locomotive, and has only one customer on the line, delivering polystyrene pellets to a plastic container manufacturing plant. A former AMTRAK GP-9 arrived in July, 2007 to replace the road's two GE 44 tonners, one operative, which have been put up for sale.
The railway operates one mile of main line but owns thirteen additional miles, seven of which are slated for abandonment once the rail is removed and sold. The M&NJ's office is in an 1872 station located on E. Main St., Middletown, and the engine shed housing the operative GE 44 tonner is located behind the depot. The GP-9 is in the modern engine house south of Sprague Ave. Former NYS&W caboose 0117 sits near the station.
In December 2005, Chartwell International, with offices in Morristown, NJ, signed an agreement with the estate of Pierre Rasmussen of Middletown to purchase majority control of the Cranberry Creek Railroad, holding company for the Middletown & New Jersey Railway. The sale took place in Feb. of 2006 and Chartwell has since acquired 100% ownership. A NYS DOT grant of $750,000 for track rehab is expected in fall of 2007 and an additional $2 million is slated for 2009.
The first railroad to reach Middletown, NY was the New York and Erie Railroad, a predecessor of the Erie Railroad, which reached the hamlet on June 1, 1843 and remained the only railroad in the immediate region for over two decades. In the early 1840's, the NY&E fostered the growth of the Orange County dairy industry by developing the capacity to ship fluid milk to New York City without spoilage. This development provided the area's dairy farmers, who had hitherto been limited to the shipment of butter, with a far more profitable business opportunity. Furthermore, by greatly accelerating the expansion of Orange County's dairy industry, this development helped foster the creation of a number of small railroads in southeast New York State including the predecessor of the Middletown and New Jersey, the Middletown, Unionville and Water Gap Railroad. The NY&E was reorganized as the Erie Railway on April 30, 1861.
In 1866, public meetings were held in Middletown, Westtown and Unionville to discuss the viability of a railroad via these hamlets to Deckertown (Sussex), NJ. A route was surveyed from Middletown to Deckertown, but as built, the Middletown, Unionville and Water Gap Railroad, only extended from a connection with the NY&E in Middletown to Unionville, which it reached on December 6, 1867 after fourteen months of construction. Freight cars received from the Erie made the fourteen mile trip to Unionville as early as January 13, 1868. The MU&WG was built to the 6 foot broad gauge of the Erie. The little road was leased to the Erie and commenced regular operations as its Unionville Branch on May 15, 1868.
On January 11, 1866, the New York and Oswego Midland Railroad was incorporated with the goal of linking Oswego, NY, on Lake Ontario, with the Hudson River at a point across from New York City. The NY&OM finally reached Middletown in 1871 and hoped to connect with three companies in New Jersey to form a through route to New York Harbor. The three New Jersey roads merged in 1870 to form the New Jersey Midland Railroad which built west in 1871 from Two Bridges (Beaver Lake) to the New Jersey/New York state line at Hanford, just south of Unionville. The link between the NY&OM and the NJM would be the MU&WG which was leased by the NY&OM effective April 1, 1872. The MU&WG was standard-gauged and the NY&OM built just over one mile of track to bridge the MU&WG over the Erie and connect it to the NY&OM at East Main Street, Middletown. The NY&OM soon entered bankruptcy and dropped the lease on the MU&WG which was then leased by the NJM in 1873. The NJM reorganized into the Midland Railroad of New Jersey in 1880 and in 1881 merged with several other roads to form the New York, Susquehanna and Western Railroad. Meanwhile, the NY&OM reorganized as the New York, Ontario and Western in 1879 and the Erie reorganized as the New York, Lake Erie & Western in 1878. The MU&WG wound up in a very favorable situation with connections to three major carriers, the NYLE&W (Erie)and O&W in Middletown and the NYS&W at Hanford. This offered the MU&WG's shippers the choice of multiple freight routings and enabled the shortline to gain better freight rates and a bigger share of the revenue by having the big carriers compete for its traffic. This advantage continued for decades and was enjoyed by its successors, the M&U and the M&NJ, until the late 1950s.
The MU&WG was the west end of the NYS&W until the NYS&W built west in 1882 from Two Bridges to Gravel Place, near Stroudsburg, PA, to gain a link to the anthracite fields via a connection with the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western. The MU&WG then functioned as the NYS&W's Middletown Branch. In 1898, the Erie Railroad, successor to the NYLE&W in 1895, gained control of the NYS&W and thus gained control of the MU&WG for the second time. The MU&WG was a very desirable property because of the tremendous milk traffic it originated, possibly the greatest in the United States at that time on a mile for mile basis. Milk was shipped to the New York metropolitan region via all three of the MU&WG's connections. Creameries and condenseries were built along the route at Pounds Station (just south of Middletown), Slate Hill, Johnson, Westtown and Unionville.
The MU&WG was taken over by the bondholders of its two mortgages on September 8, 1913 because the Erie failed to pay the interest on the bonds. The bondholders organized an independent shortline, the Middletown and Unionville Railroad, which began operations on December 1, 1913 under Vice President and General Manager J. A. Smith. The road enjoyed the revenues from its heavy milk traffic, fluid and condensed, as well as related commodities such as livestock, feed, bottles and coal for the powerhouses. The M&U would roster a total of eight steamers over the years, all bought second hand and none with a trailing truck. Three were camelbacks and the wheel arrangements included 4-4-0, 2-6-0, 4-6-0 and 2-8-0. The M&U relied on the nearby O&W shops for locomotive repairs and inspections and rented fifty-six different O&W steamers in thirteen classes while its own steamer was in the O&W shops.
A substantial passenger service, often using rail busses, was offered with emphasis on carrying high school students from hamlets along the line to school in Middletown. Construction of a new high school far from the tracks resulted in cancellation of the contract and the M&U abolished passenger service with the end of the school year in June of 1940. A multi-year, see-saw battle with truck competition ended with the final shipment of milk on August 18, 1941 from Bordens at Johnson. Between 1938 and 1942, the NYS&W, newly independent from Erie control, and the O&W developed a very close relationship, reminiscent of the "Midland Route" of an earlier era, and for a short period routed heavy coal traffic from the O&W to the NYS&W via the M&U, once again the link. On April 23, 1944, the M&U retired its last steamer and thereafter relied on leased O&W steamers and then NYS&W decapods until the arrival of brand new General Electric 44 tonner No. 1 on April 19, 1946. Three of the M&U's feed customers had purchased the diesel.
The M&U was sold at a foreclosure sale on January 15, 1947 to the three feed dealers, Manning, Simmons and Clark, who reorganized the company as the Middletown and New Jersey Railway Company, Inc. on October 1, 1947. The O&W maintained M&NJ No. 1 and loaned its own 44 tonners, Nos. 101 and 105, when No. 1 was in their shop. Traffic in the 1950s was dominated by a large GLF feed mill near Dolson Ave. in Middletown. By the mid-1950s, the three owners had died and the railroad was sold around 1956 to John Manning and Marc Suffern. In the late 1950s the M&NJ lost two of its three connections as the O&W ceased operations on March 29, 1957 and the NYS&W abandoned its Hanford Branch the next year. On February 20, 1960, the railroad was sold to three partners, Jay Wulfson,Jim Wright and Pierre Rasmussen. The GLF mill at Dolson Ave. burned down on March 30, 1962 but was rebuilt as a much larger facility including a custom mix plant and a bulk plant with an annual capacity of 50,000 tons. GLF soon merged into Agway. The complex received as many as a dozen loads daily. In the early 1960s, the Empire State Railway Museum ran diesel and steam excursions over the line until relocating to Essex, Ct., in the mid-1960s. In 1963, the M&NJ purchased a GE 44 tonner from Calco Chemical, Bound Brook, NJ, and numbered it No. 2. Service on the south end of the line was cut back about seven miles to Johnson with the last run to Unionville on December 31, 1968. Within two years service was cut back two more miles to Slate Hill. Agway opened a fertilizer plant near Dolson Ave. in 1966; Balchem opened a chemical plant in an old creamery in Slate Hill in 1968 and Polytherm Plastics (Genpak) constructed a plant in Middletown in 1969 to produce plastic plates and dishes. These three customers were the only customers in the late 1980s and through the 1990s as the Agway feed mill at Dolson Ave. closed in the mid-1980s. Agway Fertilizer closed in June of 2000 and Balchem ended rail service soon after. Pete Rasmussen became majority owner and President/General Manager of the railroad when Wulfson left to start up the Vermont Railway in the mid-1960s and sold his stock to Pete. Upon Pete's death in 2004, his wife, Lucy, as Administratrix of his estate, ran the railroad and successfully applied for $750,000 in NYS funds for rehabbing the first mile. In February of 2006, Chartwell Corp. acquired the railroad and in June of that year, they hired Tom Winant to manage the road. Winant successfully applied for an additional $2 million in NYS funding, payable in 2009, to rehab several additional miles of the railroad in order to serve various potential industrial sites. On August 8, 2007, a contractor began to rip out the rail between Lime Kiln Road in Slate Hill and Unionville and the plans apparently are to turn the seven-mile right-of-way over to the Town of Minisink for a walking trail.
No. 2 has been the sole operating unit from about 1981 into July of 2007. In the late 1970s, the M&NJ rostered 500 50' blue boxcars owned by NRUC, the National Railcar Utilization Corp. The cars were loaded at Polytherm and then spent much of their time hauling loads all over the country while the M&NJ collected 10% of the usage fees for the cars. The boom in IPD, Incentive Per Diem, box cars ended by the early 1980s and the cars returned to the M&NJ which had to open up 2 miles of unused track to store the cars until buyers could be found for them, a task which took almost a decade.
Best source for additional information, beside the M&NJ RHS, is the book "That Unionville Train" by Carl Detwyler which was published by the O&W RHS in 2003.

Contents

External links

External links

★ Middletown and New Jersey Railway Historical Society