Waiting on the Valley

Each morning, after running down to the CNJ interchange to pickup inbound cars, the RV would run lite down to the Lehigh Valley at Roselle Park to pick up inbound cars off that interchange. The RV locomotive would ordinarily tie up at the east end of the yard at the bumping block against Locust Street, where the tracks were truncated as part of the Aldene Plan. The RV’s conductor would have to walk a block and cross over the LV mainline to reach the old Roselle Park depot where the agent’s office was. The agent would handover the RV’s package of paperwork. Later on, the agent’s office was moved to a small concrete block building alongside the team track within the yard itself.

The local symbol freight out of Oak Island, OP-5 (sometimes referred to as the “Clark Drill”), handled the RV interchange at Roselle Park. OP-5 started work at about 8 AM at Oak Island yard. Its first stop was Hillside, where there were a few customers, then it’d travel down to Townley on what was called the “work track.” If it was a busy day, OP-5 would leave its cars at Townley and run just the Rahway Valley cars down to Roselle Park and set them off before running lite back up to Townley and starting its own work. If it was a lite day for OP-5, the entire train would come down to Roselle Park, which might only be a handful of cars, and would back down into the yard and set off the RV’s cars and make any pickups before proceeding towards Cranford and Clark.

OP-5 would show up at Roselle Park anywhere between 10 AM and 1 PM, normally. The train often had a lot of work to do, to the point where it was sometimes making two round trips between Townley and Clark. Sometimes, OP-5 would run a bunch of cars up the line just to get rid of them and out of the way. Then, OP-5 would come back and get its other cars and do other work. So, the RV would sometimes be stuck waiting for OP-5 because that train might have a heavy day and it took awhile for that crew to get their cars sorted out before they could get to Roselle Park. The RV crew could be waiting for their cars in Roselle Park for an hour or an hour and a half, so it was a logical place for them to take their lunch break. Mickey’s Deli, at the corner of Chestnut Street and W. Lincoln Ave., was where the crew would usually grab a bite to eat.

Once OP-5 arrived, there would be an average of four to six cars to pick up. On Monday, there might be as many as ten inbound cars to take out of Roselle Park.