| As Union County became ever-more congested during the
years of the Rahway Valley Railroad's operation, several major highways
made invasions into Rahway Valley Territory. The Garden
State Parkway , originally designated as Route 4 Parkway, was
constructed through Union County from 1947 to 1950. The new highway
crossed over the Rahway Valley Railroad with an overpass, between the
Boulevard
and Market Street grade crossings, just south of the present day
A&P. Unlike the tumultuous relationship the railroad had with
Route
22
(a crossing made at grade), the railroad and the Parkway had a
relatively quiet and uneventual relationship.
However, during the construction of the highway, there was
a rather eventful day. Bob Hoeft, a RVRR
fireman at the time, relates the following story
---- "
Well, one day,
before they intended, they had to put it in service. About 10:30 AM, one
morning, we were pulling a good size train with the No. 13 (a light 73 ton Baldwin
Consolidation) west on the main paralleling Market Street in Kenilworth
when a power shovel that was digging a ditch (for whatever reason - it
might have been related to the Garden State Parkway which was under
construction) on the fireman's side swung 180 degrees and was going to hit
the locomotive. I saw it coming and pulled the air as I 'joined the
birds'.
The bucket smashed the headlight, broke the bell harp from the
locomotive, which, with the bell, fell to the walkway on the engineer's
side. Continuing, the bucket hit the steam dome a glancing blow and bent
the pops causing a deafening roar of escaping steam, bouncing upward and
when we stopped, the bucket was resting on the caboose putting a big gash
in the roof. We carried the caboose behind the tank (tender).
With the loss of steam at the pops, we knew we would soon be dead
so we cut the engine off and ran like hell for the Kenilworth Office. When
Clark saw it and us, he vehemently cursed everything and everybody
individually for letting it happen. We still had a days work ahead of us
so we started the diesel and went back to our train. The crane operator,
who spoke broken English but good Italian, denied putting the hole in the
caboose roof." (See The Line's First
Diesel
) |
