Downer & Willimstown Branch

[Kevinhooa]

Williamstown

Jerseyman, that's pretty neat. I had read about the CNJ as well as the Reading taking control of the railroad as they had both shared a lot of trackage. I didn't know that anything was actually done to access the Delaware Bay. From what I read the Reading was going to use this line to access the Delaware Bay because their original line to Camden was Narrow Gauged by the Philadelphia and Atlantic City RR (predecessor to ACRR), and it would be cheaper to just extend the line rather that standard gauging their 60 miles worth of track on the main. They decided to just standardize the main and I guess scrapped whatever plans they had to the Delaware. Thanks for the info.

Kevin

 

[Scroggy]

Resurrecting the necro-thread here because I've been thinking about the other end of the W&DR. The Baltimore & Ohio built a track on the south side of Wilmington, Delaware down to the Christina River, about where the I-295 bridge is now. That would have been their ferry connection to the W&DR, I think with the idea of providing Baltimore-Atlantic City service.

The Williamstown Railroad got charter rights to build from Glassboro west to Penns Grove pier as early as 1866. This newspaper lays out the old survey of the route, running to the south of Ewan's Mills, Harrisonville, and Mount [sic; for "Point"] Airy, and north of Woodstown and Sharptown. They would have had to bend from west to northwest at that point to hit Penns Grove. The newspaper suggests that the line might run to Mullica Hill (as it did) but would then have to miss Woodstown. I remember someone asserting online many years ago that the straightening of the "elbow" in Route 322 south of the Turnpike used W&DR grading, but I don't think that's true; the tree-lined lane occupying that alignment before Route 322 was routed onto it shows in 1970s aerials but not in the 1930s. I suspect that the 322 realignment was planned with the building of the turnpike but languished unfinished for some time. I'd be curious to know about the remains of any grading; I haven't seen anything that stood out on LIDAR as pointing the right way.

 

[Boyd]

Very interesting... but I'm lost! A few map links might help. I'm somewhat familiar with that area but others may not be, since it's not really in the Pines. FWIW, this is where the tracks cross Fries Mill Road (County Route 655) at Downer which is somewhere near the location that this thread from 2009 was originally talking about. This is Ewan (is that the same as Ewan's Mills?) and Harrisonville (although this is also Harrisonville) and Point Airy with Woodstown to the South and here is Sharptown. Sorry, I didn't see a route in your newspaper link, but it's probably buried in that big wall of text.

I don't understand which part of Route 322 you're talking about, sorry. This is the section Southeast of Mullica Hill that was re-routed sometime in the last 10 or 15 years(?), you can see the original on the 24k topo and the new route on my 2023 topo. But you're probably talking about an older re-routing, because this change makes 322 more curvey and less straight.

Now, this is just a personal preference - you're certainly free to do whatever you like - but I'm not a fan of bumping very old threads like this. It's a little weird; everyone (but Jerseyman) who posted here has not been on the site for many years (they may no longer be among the living). I think it's usually better to just start a new thread, then post a link to the old thread as a reference.