Central Railroad of New Jersey, freight trains

Mikado at Fanwood

Jersey Central heavy 2-8-2 872 rolls a 79-car general freight west on the main line at Fanwood, N.J., in April 1946.

Photograph by R. R. Malinoski

Westbound at Jim Thorpe

SD40 3061 and a GP7 lead an Allentown–Wilkes-Barre freight past the landmark station at Jim Thorpe, Pa., in the early 1970s, not long before Jersey Central ended its operations in Pennsylvania. Today, Reading & Northern tourist trains call here.

Photograph by Peter Rickershauser

Baldwins on the High Bridge Branch

Green-and-yellow “Babyface” Baldwins switch cars at High Bridge, N.J., before heading up the branch with cars for the Erie Lackawanna interchange at Lake Junction on June 22, 1962. This job was the last stand for Jersey Central’s Babyfaces.

Photograph by Robert E. Gabbey

Bronx freight yard

Carfloats plying New York Harbor enabled Jersey Central to serve points not physically connected to its rail network. Box-cab No. 1000, considered the first commercially successful U.S. diesel, switches at CNJ’s cramped freight terminal in the Bronx.

Frank DiFalco collection

Freight on the NY&LB

GP7s 1532 and 1528 approach South Amboy, N.J., with sand hoppers from south Jersey in August 1956. This is the New York & Long Branch Railroad, a joint operation of Jersey Central, which held freight rights on the line, and PRR, whose catenary from New York ended here.

Photograph by Bob Krone

Hoppers in the Lehigh Gorge

Wide-fireboxed Jersey Central 2-8-2 835 leads empty coal hoppers west at Penn Haven Junction, Pa., several miles up the Lehigh Gorge from Mauch Chunk (since renamed Jim Thorpe), in the 1940s. At right and in the foreground is the Lehigh Valley’s main line, also double track.

Photograph by Wayne Brumbaugh

Eastbound at Bethlehem

Two SD35s lead eastbound tonnage past the Jersey Central station at Bethlehem, Pa., on December 21, 1970. Though it looks prosperous enough here, within two years CNJ would retreat from the Keystone State.

Photograph by Peter Rickershauser

Switching at Cranford

Jersey Central engine 1501, a Fairbanks-Morse H15-44, switches cars in the small yard along the main line at Cranford, N.J., on April 26, 1958. In the background, other F-M road-switchers wait out the weekend with commuter-train consists.

Photograph by Gene Collora

Ashley Planes

Two cars of coal ascend the topmost of the three inclined planes that lifted freight out of the Susquehanna River valley at Ashley, Pa., on October 5, 1941. The steam in the distance is from a hoisting engine at the top of the middle plane. The planes, 2½ miles long in total, with a maximum grade of nearly 15 percent, closed in 1948 after 90 years of operation.

Photograph by C. A. Schrade

Southern Division freight

Former Baltimore & Ohio SD40s 3062 and 3068 and RS3 1701 stand in the siding at Lakehurst, N.J., with 60-car Elizabethport–Bridgeton freight JS-1 on April 4, 1975. Thirty-five years earlier, this line carried the Blue Comet.

Photograph by William T. Morgan