 | This articlerelies largely or entirely on asingle source. Relevant discussion may be found on thetalk page. Please helpimprove this article byintroducing citations to additional sources. Find sources: "Port Reading Railroad" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(December 2009) |
 | |
 1923 map | |
| Overview | |
|---|---|
| Dates of operation | 1890 (1890)–1976 (1976) |
| Successor | Conrail |
ThePort Reading Railroad was a railway company in theUnited States. It was incorporated in 1890 and completed its main line in 1892. It was controlled throughout its corporate life by theReading Company. The Port Reading Railroad's line was conveyed toConrail in 1976, and is today thePort Reading Secondary.
The Port Reading Railroad started at thePort Reading Junction inManville, New Jersey (nearBound Brook) with theLehigh Valley Railroad andCentral Railroad of New Jersey and headed eastward across northernMiddlesex County, New Jersey to a terminus port calledPort Reading, which was situated on theArthur Kill inWoodbridge Township nearPerth Amboy, New Jersey. Port Reading was constructed specifically to serve the needs of thePhiladelphia and Reading Railway.
Via the Port Reading Railroad and the affiliatedPort Reading shipping terminal (which was also built by thePhiladelphia and Reading Railway) along theArthur Kill waterway, trains from the Reading Co's Trenton line (originally theDelaware and Bound Brook Railroad) were capable of providing through service to/from the New York ports to points south and west, via a connection along theRaritan River fromManville, New Jersey to Bound Brook that was built between the Philadelphia and Reading Railway's Trenton line and the newly built Port Reading Railroad. Remnants of this connection, such as decaying trestles and track, can still be seen along the CSX/NS mainline through this area. The structures closest to the river are the formerReading Co. connection.
The Port Reading Railroad and its parent thePhiladelphia and Reading Railway, as was the case for many American railroads of the time period, saw a general drop off in business as the 20th Century progressed, and the railroads fell into disrepair and eventually went bankrupt. Secondary lines such as the Port Reading Railroad were hit especially hard during this period of decline, as the parent railroads neglected their branch lines as business declined.
By the timeConrail took over most railroading in the northeastern United States in 1976, the renamed Port Reading Secondary (terminology used by Conrail to describe branch lines) was little more than a seldom used line that serviced local industries. This status continued throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s as Conrail saw little need for the redundant Port Reading Secondary beyond providing local freight services (Conrail used theLehigh Line for most traffic into the New York area from the south).
In 1999,CSX andNorfolk Southern splitConrail, but because of the Port Reading Secondary's proximity to the New York City consumer market, they could not decide how to split it, so, they took most of the lines near NYC and they created a separate company,Conrail Shared Assets Operations. It is jointly owned by the two railroads, to switch cars in the NYC area. (The same thing happened in the Philadelphia area and the Detroit area).[1] In contrast to earlier decades, the 1990s was a decade in which railroads started to see some incremental increases in freight traffic as increases in freight demand and congested highways caused more shippers to move their freight via rail. To respond to the challenge of serving the increased demands of the New York/New Jersey region, CSAO invested millions of dollars to upgrade the Port Reading Secondary to handle long distance trains, including intermodal trains taking an alternate route to their terminals along the Chemical Coast Line, such as NS's E-Rail Terminal and the PANYNJ owned ExpressRail terminals.
The Port Reading Secondary now offers an additional route to CSAO's rail facilities in thePort of New York and New Jersey, via theChemical Coast line that runs along heavily industrialized eastern New Jersey, near theArthur Kill waterway that separates New Jersey fromStaten Island, New York. Rail traffic has increased substantially on the Port Reading Secondary in recent years as a result of the upgrades. Railroad signals currently exist at the crossing on Homestead Avenue inAvenel, but not at Omar Avenue in Avenel, where such signals would interfere with exiting trucks. Also, Carteret has signals at the crossing by the NJ Turnpike entrance. Also, Port Reading Conrail has signal gates at Blair Road, Rahway Avenue and Saint Georges Avenue in Woodbridge Township.
