![]() ![]() Here is this place, surrounded by civilization, and nobody's here." "I like to come to the abandoned spots where's there's no one. "Where else are you going to find a lineal path that's so long in New Jersey, and not come across people?" he said. Still, the odds are that no one will stop you. That's why it might be just as well to enjoy all this vicariously, through Antabanez's book. "There's nothing more romantic, to capture your imagination, than to walk down a railroad track."ĭangerous, too, needless to say - especially if you haven't ascertained, first, that the tracks are abandoned (the Newark branch does in fact merge into an active train line, near Clifton). It's also trespassing. "This is the shadow lands of New Jersey," Antabanez said. It just became invisible - still there, running right by residential neighborhoods and cutting through warehouse districts, but unused, unnoticed, not quite part of everyday reality. The Newark Branch, part of the Erie Railroad, went into operation in the 1870s, and was an active route until 1966.Īfter that, it didn't disappear. Related: Beware of Oily Oliver, the oozing monstrosity who once roamed Bergen County The old line It was fitted in place, on a day long ago, by a proud workman - who is now as forgotten as the factory, the railroad cars that ran past it, and the passengers who saw it fleetingly from their trains as they rattled on to a Newark of trolley cars and department stores, now also gone. Once, that bleary pane of glass in that old factory window was clear. Once, a commuter train lumbered over those rails. What is a ghost, but a dead piece of the past, still living in the present? All of these rusted, rotted, abandoned eyesores were once living, vital pieces of infrastructure. ![]()
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