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RE: (erielack) Montville Station

> After reading all of the comments about the Montville station 
> I began wondering why it was there.  Could it be that it was 
> created for workers to get to the Pennick factory or its 
> predecessors?  Transportation was difficult before the 1930's 
> so taking the train to work might have been the thing to do.  
> The station is only about a mile from Boonton.  


That's the only thing I can think of. Up until not-too-recently, there really wasn't much "out there" on Taylortown Road where the Montville station was (and its small size seems to emphasize that fact). Plus, as has been pointed out, the Boonton station was about a mile west, and Towaco's station about a mile east. (Towaco - another town where there wasn't all that much "out there" in EL days)


  
> I always thought of Montville as the low rent district 
> between Towaco and Boonton.  It's hard to believe how things 
> have changed.  Montville has some things that never seem to 
> change like Van Riper Real Estate on the corner.  There was a 
> junk yard up the hill going to Boonton with a bar in front of 
> it.  On the Main Road to Towaco just past Van Riper was a 
> feed store.  I think it's now condos.  The railroad was 
> tucked away from the central part of the town.

In the time I've been railfanning Montville (a short bike ride from my childhood home in Boonton), the changes have been dramatic and drastic. I used to enjoy watching trains at the Abbett Road crossing (a little dirt road but with actual crossing flashers!) - right behind the Vreeland apple farm and surrounded by not much else. Thermal Fused Quartz was the only industry in that area at the end of EL days, and it received BN covered hoppers of... quartz?

Fast-forward 20 years: Thermal Fused Quartz is now a gym (!!!), Vreeland's farm is no longer, and all that empty space around the tracks has rapidly filled up with "McMansions" (there's a notably HUGE one whose backyard is literally right on the Boonton Line - how much you want to bet those folks will be lobbying for fewer trains?)

"Progress."

	- Paul

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