The Line's First Diesel

Our new 70 ton GE (No. 16) was delivered to the Rahway Valley (it came in via Summit from the DL&W) in February 1951. George Clark did not put it in service right away as he and George Davis, the master mechanic, wanted to play with it and learn its idiosyncrasies around Kenilworth before putting it on the road.

Our new 70 ton GE (No. 16) was delivered to the Rahway Valley (it came in via Summit from the DL&W) in February 1951. George Clark did not put it in service right away as he and George Davis, the master mechanic, wanted to play with it and learn its idiosyncrasies around Kenilworth before putting it on the road.

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.

Frank Froat had never run a diesel before so George Davis stayed with us the rest of the day. That diesel sure spun its wheels a lot easier than a steam engine. You could not hear it when they were starting to spin but I soon picked up that you could see them start to spin when the ammeter suddenly dropped.

Getting back to the point of this story, we were now running quite late and about 9:30 PM, we were shaking out our CNJ and LV deliveries which required us to cross and recross Colfax Avenue in Roselle Park many times. Frank Froat would blow the Nathans the standard 2 long, 1 short, 1 long every time we crossed Colfax Avenue. It was deafening. When we finally wound up at the office about 11:00 PM, Clark came out and said his phone had been burning up for hours with people complaining about the horn. He said one guy who lived in the Colfax Garden Apartments threatened to shove the Nathans up Froat's posterior orifice. After we went into diesel operation, George Clark bought Frank Froat a new pair of overalls and admonished him, in writing, on the bulletin board, to take at least one bath a week. Those of you that knew Froat will understand that. I got along good with Froat but that was only because I was an Episcopalian. I was a lot whiter than he was but he always called me 'boy'