The Vineland Secondary is a rail line owned, operated and maintained by

Conrail Shared Assets Operations Conrail Shared Assets Operations (CSAO) is the commonly used name for modern-day Conrail (reporting mark CRCX), an American railroad company. It operates three networks, the North Jersey, South Jersey/Philadelphia, and Detroit Shared Assets Area ...

for the use of

CSX Transportation CSX Transportation , known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Class I freight railroad operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. The railroad operates approximately 21,000 route miles () of track. ...

and

Norfolk Southern Railway The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad in the United States formed in 1982 with the merger of Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway. With headquarters in Atlanta, the company operates 19,420 route miles (31 ...

. It begins at

Pavonia Yard Pavonia Yard is a Conrail Shared Assets Operations (CSAO) rail yard in Camden, New Jersey. The yard begins just north of where the Vineland Secondary tracks cross the Cooper River near the intersection of State and Federal Streets, and continue ...

in Camden and heads south, with a spur serving the

Port of Camden The Port of Camden is situated on east bank of the Delaware River in Camden and Gloucester City in southern New Jersey. It is one of several ports in the Delaware Valley metro area port complex and is located near the mouth of Newtown Creek oppo ...

. At

Woodbury Woodbury may refer to: Geography Antarctica *Woodbury Glacier, a glacier on Graham Land, British Antarctic Territory Australia * Woodbury, Tasmania, a locality in Australia England * Woodbury, Bournemouth, an area in Dorset *Woodbury, East Devo ...

it junctions with the

Salem Branch The Salem Branch is a rail freight line in the southwestern part of New Jersey in the United States between the Port of Salem and Woodbury Junction where it and the Penns Grove Secondary converge with the Vineland Secondary, approximately sout ...

and

Penns Grove Secondary Penns Grove Secondary is a Rail freight transport, rail freight line in the Delaware Valley in the South Jersey, southwestern part of New Jersey. Part of Conrail's South Jersey/Philadelphia Shared Assets Area, South Jersey/Philadelphia Shared Asset ...

, and continues to Millville, passing through namesake

Vineland ''Vineland'' is a 1990 novel by Thomas Pynchon, a postmodern fiction set in California, United States in 1984, the year of Ronald Reagan's reelection.Knabb 2002 Through flashbacks by its characters, who have lived the sixties in their youth, th ...

. At its southern end it connects to the

OmniTRAX OmniTRAX, Inc. is a transportation and transportation infrastructure holding company based in Denver, Colorado, in the United States. It primarily owns or operates railroads, with a network of 25 regional and shortline railroads in 12 U.S. states ...

-owned

Winchester and Western Railroad The Winchester and Western Railroad is a shortline railroad operating from Gore through Winchester, Virginia and West Virginia to Hagerstown, Maryland. It also operates several lines in southern New Jersey, connecting to Conrail Shared Assets Op ...

. The line is used exclusively for

freight Cargo consists of bulk goods conveyed by water, air, or land. In economics, freight is cargo that is transported at a freight rate for commercial gain. ''Cargo'' was originally a shipload but now covers all types of freight, including transp ...

, however, the northern portion is planned to be used for the proposed Glassboro–Camden light rail line.

History

The West Jersey Railroad (WJ) was granted its charter by the state on February 5, 1853 to build a line from Camden to

Cape May Cape May consists of a peninsula and barrier island system in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It is roughly coterminous with Cape May County, New Jersey, Cape May County and runs southwards from the New Jersey mainland, separating Delaware Bay fro ...

. The line was built with the backing of the

Camden and Amboy Railroad The United New Jersey Railroad and Canal Company (UNJ&CC) was a railroad company which began as the important Camden & Amboy Railroad (C&A), whose 1830 lineage began as one of the eight or ten earliest permanent North AmericanList of Earliest Am ...

from Camden to Glassboro, with the first 8.2 miles of the line using the abandoned

right-of-way Right of way is the legal right, established by grant from a landowner or long usage (i.e. by prescription), to pass along a specific route through property belonging to another. A similar ''right of access'' also exists on land held by a gov ...

(ROW) built by the Camden and Woodbury Railroad to Woodbury. In 1896 the

Pennsylvania Railroad The Pennsylvania Railroad (reporting mark PRR), legal name The Pennsylvania Railroad Company also known as the "Pennsy", was an American Class I railroad that was established in 1846 and headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was named ...

(PRR) consolidated all its railroads and several smaller properties in southern New Jersey into the

West Jersey and Seashore Railroad The West Jersey and Seashore Railroad (WJ&S) was a Pennsylvania Railroad subsidiary in the U.S. state of New Jersey with a connection to Philadelphia. It was formed through the merger of several smaller roads in May 1896. At the end of 1925 it ...

(WJ&S). In 1932, the PRR and

Reading Company The Reading Company ( ) was a Philadelphia-headquartered railroad that provided passenger and commercial rail transport in eastern Pennsylvania and neighboring states that operated from 1924 until its 1976 acquisition by Conrail. Commonly called ...

(RDG) merged their southern New Jersey railroad lines into one company, the

Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines The Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines was a railroad that operated in South Jersey in the 20th century. It was created in 1933 as a joint consolidation venture between two competing railroads in the region: the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Rea ...

(PRSL). The line was electrified between 1906–1949. In 1968

New York Central Railroad The New York Central Railroad was a railroad primarily operating in the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The railroad primarily connected greater New York and Boston in the east with Chicago and St. Louis in the Midw ...

was merged into the PRR becoming

Penn Central The Penn Central Transportation Company, commonly abbreviated to Penn Central, was an American Railroad classes, class I railroad that operated from 1968 to 1976. Penn Central combined three traditional corporate rivals (the Pennsylvania Railroad ...

, which was bankrupt by 1970. The last passenger train ran on February 5, 1971. The line came under the auspices of

Conrail Conrail , formally the Consolidated Rail Corporation, was the primary Class I railroad in the Northeastern United States between 1976 and 1999. The trade name Conrail is a portmanteau based on the company's legal name. It continues to do busin ...

. Following the purchase and division of Conrail it was designated part of the

South Jersey/Philadelphia Shared Assets Area Conrail Shared Assets Operations (CSAO) is the commonly used name for modern-day Conrail (reporting mark CRCX), an American railroad company. It operates three networks, the North Jersey, South Jersey/Philadelphia, and Detroit Shared Assets Areas ...

, becoming known as the Vineland Secondary. In 1995, Conrail refurbished the Vineland Secondary and the connected Millville Running Track. The original station house Glassboro station was restored in the 2010s. In 2012,

New Jersey Department of Transportation The New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) is the agency responsible for transportation issues and policy in New Jersey, including maintaining and operating the state's highway and public road system, planning and developing transportat ...

determined the ROW should be preserved and could expect expanded future use. In 2019,

level crossing A level crossing is an intersection where a railway line crosses a road, Trail, path, or (in rare situations) airport runway, at the same level, as opposed to the railway line crossing over or under using an Overpass#Railway, overpass ...

s through Vineland were upgraded or eliminated.{{cite web, url=https://eu.thedailyjournal.com/story/news/2019/07/16/nj-vineland-conrail-transportation-arbor-avenue-closing-traffic-july-permantly/1740630001/, title=Conrail closing Vineland rail crossing, last=Smith, first=Joseph P., newspaper=

The Daily Journal (New Jersey) ''The Daily Journal'' is a newspaper printed in Vineland, New Jersey from Monday to Saturday. It is distributed throughout most of Cumberland County in Southern New Jersey. Its main competitors are ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'', the ''Courier Po ...

, date=July 16, 2019, access-date=April 3, 2021

References

Conrail lines Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines lines Transportation in Camden County, New Jersey Transportation in Gloucester County, New Jersey Transportation in Camden, New Jersey

History

See also

References