ALDENE

Baltimore & Ohio and Reading Company

B&O No. 76, a 1945-built EMD E7A, heads a passenger train westbound through Cranford. The CNJ’s coach yard is seen in the background. This photograph was taken from the yet unopened Parkway overpass. (Photographer unknown) 
RDG No. 903, an EMD FP7A, is on the point of the westbound Wall Street through Aldene in May 1965. Romerovski Brothers is seen to the left. Gordon Street is the bridge in the background. This photograph was taken from the LV bridge. (Photographer unknown)

The Baltimore & Ohio (B&O) and Reading (RDG) railroads had a presence on the Central Railroad of New Jersey (CNJ) mainline between Bound Brook and Jersey City. In 1879, the Reading reached Bound Brook and began operating to New York terminals via CNJ trackage rights. A year later, the B&O discontinued a decades-long relationship with the Pennsylvania Railroad and began utilizing the RDG-CNJ route north of Philadelphia to reach New York.

The B&O, RDG, and CNJ had a three-way haulage arrangement for freight north of Philadelphia, whereby each railroad was responsible for its own portion of the traffic and shared revenue based on mileage. The RDG obtained a controlling interest in the CNJ in 1901; the B&O gained controlling interest in the RDG in 1903. The B&O also operated a subsidiary, the Staten Island Rapid Transit (SIRT) line, which connected with the CNJ at Cranford Junction. The RV leveraged this B&O-RDG-CNJ familial relationship in attracting industrial concerns to its rails through advertising connections to all three railroads. Haulage agreements between the three railroads afforded RV clientele competitive freight rates across the three systems and, for years, Aldene was the railroad’s heaviest interchange. Utilizing the RDG-CNJ north of Philadelphia, the B&O and Reading operated several named trains into the CNJ’s Communipaw Terminal in Jersey City: 

The B&O discontinued passenger service north of Baltimore on April 26, 1958. In 1967, the Aldene Plan rerouted RDG passenger trains from Jersey City to Newark Penn Station. The absorbtion of the RDG and CNJ into Conrail in April 1976, effectively squeezed the B&O out of the New York market. The railroad continued to operate one train a day to Cranford Junction until 1985, when it spun off its SIRT freight operations to Delaware Otsego Corp. SEPTA and NJDOT continued to operate the Crusader and the Wall Street into Newark, via Aldene, until 1982.