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(erielack) Lake Junction now and then

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Lake_Jct.jpg (image/pjpeg, 879x579 271060 bytes)
Chester_Branch.jpg (image/pjpeg, 882x585 199739 bytes)
Lake_Junction_Yard.jpg (image/pjpeg, 894x594 203898 bytes)


  A few weeks ago in January I decided to stop by Lake Junction NJ, as luck would have it the Morristown & Erie local was working in the area! DL&W's Chester Branch just turned 136 years old just a few days prior, enjoy!  A few hundred feet off the DL&W mainline we see M&E 18 and it's one car train with former NYS&W caboose #4 as a NJT commuter trains flashes by westbound... hey, one would think this is still a busy place! The second view shows where the Chester Branch (Chester Railroad of 1869) crossed the CNJ's Highbridge Branch (1873)heading for the Hopatcong Railroad. Of course the Chester Railroad the M&E Alco is about to work was built to haul Iron Ore out of the Hedges and Hacklebarney mines and a connection with the Ferromonte Railroad. Behind the short train is the connection to the DL&W eastbound main toward Hoboken, The Lackawanna Railroad recognized this area as Chester Junction, a station once stood right here too.
  The last image looks across the pilot of M&E 18 toward the former Lake Junction yard, an area that was once occupied by a small interchange yard with the CNJ, and of course the "New Connection" running up to the EL for the ES-99 and SE-98 pool freights. In addition, off to the left a short branch to the Hercules ammunition plant (Nicknamed the 'Gunpowder Branch') once connected off the yard ladder. At the far end of the yard, the tracks again rejoined to one to and ducked underneath the lackawanna through a concrete culvert.. of course! 
  Lets not forget two serious train wrecks happened at the exact spot you see M&E's C425. The first on September 12th 1872 when poor Taff Treadway was thrown 35 feet after thirteen empty Ore cars derailed on top of him! he escaped the pile up with just a broken collar bone. Then of course the June 17, 1974 wreck that took the life of two EL railroaders, here's the FRA report...
http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/el/ops/lake-jct.html
  The Highbridge Branch of the CNJ crossed the Chester Branch on a diamond at this spot and headed for HO Juction (Always liked the that name) away from the firemans side of the C425, and headed south toward the CNJ mainline in Highbridge NJ. Encountering the "Hookerman" along the way! Sorry, had too... But what I find really intresting is the fact the Chester Railraod took almost an hour to commute from Chester NJ to downtown Dover... the M&E of 2005 takes just a little longer some days, and that's just from here!  :)
Todd (ELHS 1318)
  
  
 


		
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