By Bill McKelvey, Chairman Emeritus, Liberty Historic Railway
River LINE train at Bordentown Station, Credit: Todd’s Railfan Guide to Bordentown, NJ.
View of the numerous scale models by Pierre Lacombe, of the railroad track types tried by the Camden & Amboy Railroad. Full sized examples / exhibits of these are planned for the open area between the River LINE parking lot and Farnsworth Avenue overpass in Bordentown. Photo by Larry Gross.
Camden & Amboy Railroad Tour and Orientation participants on 8.26.2024 L to R: Bill McKelvey, Chairman Emeritus, Liberty Historic Railway (LHRy); Charles (Rusty) King, Retired Chief Dispatcher, NJ Transit; Bill Strassner, Signalman extraordinaire, CNJ and other roads; Greg Bender, Director, LHRy; Larry Gross, Director, LHRy; Doug Kiovsky, VP, Bordentown Historical Society; and Pierre Lacombe, Geologist & Railroad Historian, with the nearly 200-year-old Farnsworth Avenue Stone Arch Bridge / Tunnel in the background. Photo by Ellen Kovac.
Taking advantage of the week of free fares offered by NJ Transit at the end of August, Liberty Historic Railway put together a group of interested railroad historians for an excursion tour of the River LINE between Trenton and Camden, with a focus on the Bordentown area. This line closely follows most of the original Camden and Amboy route – New Jersey’s first railroad. Larry, Rusty and I met at Chatham station and took a Morris & Essex (M&E) train to Secaucus. There, we transferred to a Trenton train. At Trenton we discovered that Greg and friend Ellen Kovac had gotten on the same train at Metro Park. We walked across the street to board the next available River LINE train, only to find that Bill Strassner was on that train from Bordentown. We all got on that southbound train and rushed to the “railfan” seats just behind the operator. In a few minutes of travel alongside the former route of the Delaware & Raritan Canal, we arrived at Bordentown and were joined by Pierre Lacombe and Doug Kiovsky.
We walked over to the freight track at the south side of the Bordentown station parking lot where Pierre displayed his C&A model track type exhibits. Pierre explained each of the fourteen styles of track construction to us and provided us with numerous pages of maps and diagrams to educate us on the wonderful C&A history. We then walked northeast on the freight track towards the Farnsworth Avenue Bridge / Tunnel, with Pierre pointing out the C & A sleepers, stone date blocks, and the markings of height above mean sea level, as well as the construction of the historic retaining walls. There we posed for a group photo at this most historic railroad location.
HIGHLIGHTS;
The 1831 Farnsworth Avenue, Bordentown, stone arch bridge / tunnel is America’s oldest bridge built over railroad tracks. Initial traffic over the bridge was stagecoaches as well as other horse-drawn vehicles and pedestrians. In 1899 trolley tracks were laid over the bridge and used regularly until 1931. Since then, traffic over the bridge has consisted of automobiles, trucks, buses and pedestrians.
The Camden & Amboy Railroad Bordentown right-of-way is the World’s first site to use Stevens’ style flat bottom “T” rails and doghead spikes.
The first public transport of people by the John Bull steam locomotive occurred 1-mile northeast of Farnsworth Avenue, starting at the present Rt. 206 on November 12, 1831.
The tracks under Farnsworth Avenue have been in continuous use since 1831.
The Bordentown Historical Society proposes that a tourist shuttle using a River Line train be run on the former C&A freight track for the C&A 200th anniversary celebration in 2031. LHRy fully supports this proposal.
LHRy proposes that a trolley shuttle would be a desirable long-term tourism attraction for this three-mile-long former Camden & Amboy freight track at Bordentown and would be willing to provide funding for implementation.
We next walked two blocks north to Angie’s Luncheonette, where LHRy treated all to lunch. Following lunch, we boarded the River LINE train south for Camden and then retraced our route back to Trenton, Secaucus and Chatham. It was a long, but most interesting and educational day. LHRy is a sustaining member of Bordentown Historical Society and has pledged funding to construct and install the C&A track exhibits at Bordentown.
When it gets closer to the 200th anniversary of the Camden & Amboy, wouldn’t it be wonderful to see a River LINE train wrapped in the image below?
