| There was a coal yard spur w/trestle(between the 2 tall line poles on left) through the 50's.Headed east bound sidings on right are Royal Paper(Van Ness),Phizer and Globe Products , Durotest (old Dumont plant)on left and Sterns and Foster right,Nelson Iron Wks. left and Brighton Mill/Eastern Colortype/Kidde Corp. on the right just before Bloomfield Ave. . There were at least 6 more active sidings before the Rte.3 overpass.Over a dozen active customers in about a mile kept the local here for a couple of hours daily.I recall the local barreling through here every afternoon at track speed(+?) racing back to Paterson ahead of the commuter rush.The SW would hunt so wildly over the switches that it looked like it was trying to shake the train off it's tail.For a while in the mid 50's a PA was pulling one of the morning commuter trains.The only maintenance after 1966 passenger curtailment was when city threatened to embargo the branch.I can remember the annual weed spraying train(don't eat the blackberrys off the orange bushes!) a Jordan spreader ditching after Hurricane Diane(1955) and labor gangs wielding scythes to clear the brush. |