Middletown and New Jersey Railroad

Middletown and New Jersey Railroad
A tour of The Middletown and New Jersey Railroad, an East Penn/Regional Rail property.
East Penn finalized the purchase of the line from Chartwell on April 16, 2009, who had in turn purchased the line from Harold Rasmussen, one of the long time owners. For years, the line from Dolson Avenue to Slate Hill was dormant, with the only activity, the storage of brand new trash flat cars that Chartwell assumed Middletown would allow.
The last run to Slate Hill to service Balchem was on July 14, 2002. East Penn changed that in 2009.
East Penn/Regional Rail reopened the line beginning with uncovering the Route 78 Xing in April of 2009, and quickly storing over 200 hopper cars from The end of track to Kirbytown Road.
Currently, in the winter of 2010, contaminated soil is being trucked from a superfund site in Newburgh, via I-84 to Middletown, boosting The MNJ to a daily operation.
Railroad: Middletown and New Jersey RAILROAD
Website: www.mnjrr.com/
Regional Rail startup: April 16, 2009
Purchase price: $450,000 (per Times-Herald Record)
Train origin: Middletown, New York
Train destination: Slate Hill, New York
Engines- MNJ 773
NS Engine: NS 5610 (GP38-2)
Locations: Listed on the video itself
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MNJ RAILWAY------------------------
Chartwell Dark History:
Purchased from Harold Rasmussen.
Former owner Chartwell startup: February 2006
Chartwell Purchase price: $2.2 million
Webb Road mysteriously paved over: August 9, 2006
Agreement with Middletown: May 2007
Meeting with Town of Wawayanda: July 5, 2007
(Yonkers Rails ATTENDED this meeting)
Slate Hill-Unionville scrapped: Began August 9, 2007
Cars bought then resold: 60 cars to Tealinc Ltd., $1,374,000 cash deal that closed on Jan. 30, 2009.
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Rasmussen History:
Bought by Pierre Rasmussen in 1968.
Active service scaled back to Johnson in 1968.
Active service scaled back to Slate Hill in 1970.
The last run to Slate Hill to service Balchem was on July 14, 2002.
©2010 Michael Foley
Yonkersrails.com
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

[@MichaelSullivanPhoto1985]

Now that this operation has become more active with all this trash traffic, I'm gonna have to get up to Middletown and see this. That P5 sounds great too!

[@JamesTyreeII]

They cleaned up the part of the line by the garage real well!