RE: (erielack) Re:Great Notch photos...

["Montgomery, Edward T" <ETMontgomery_@_fcps.edu>]

These are interesting thoughts about the "Silver Lake" and "Greenwood Lake" trains.  Freight Traffic on the Greenwood Lake branch dropped off very quickly in the 1960s.  The Orange Branch was probably had the most business.  North Newark seemed to have some traffic on team tracks until the mid 60s and that dropped off.  A lot of the customers in the Montclair area seemed to move out by 1970.  Mack Molding switched over to injection molding and shut down their steam facilities in the 60s so no coal was delivered.  Most of the lumber yards started getting deliveries by flatbed truck or went out of business as room for subdivision development was disappearing.  I worked at Van Ness Lumber in the summer of 1967 and they were still getting an occassional carload of wood but trucks were competing with them and won over the business by the early 70's.  Pequannock Feed and Supply would also get a carload on the Pequannock team track a few times a year.  By the early 60s EL had terminated all freight deliveries beyond Pompton-Riverdale making all clients unload their consigned cars at that station.  I suppose the biggest clients EL had on the Greenwood Lake beyond Mountain View was Murry Pipe and Edwards Engineering in Pompton Plains.  I had heard that Edwards wanted NYS&W to continue to service them when they took over the track from Conrail.  However, I guess there was not enough business to justify extending the service to them.

Ed Montgomery

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