Rail Preservation on the Rahway Valley

O. Winston Link was a professional photographer based in New York City. Link later rose to prominence when his dramatic nighttime photographs of Norfolk & Western Railway (N&W) steam locomotives became well-known. Between 1955 and 1960, Link made roughly twenty visits to the N&W to document its fading steam era. 

After completing that project, Link began to dabble in rail preservation. In December 1960, Link acquired a Canadian Pacific 4-6-0 Ten Wheeler and had it shipped to Elizabethport. George A. Clark, President and General Manager of the Rahway Valley Railroad, noted, “Link’s engine is stored outside the Jersey Central Shops . . . He must eventually move it as the ‘Labor Unions’ will not permit him to do any work on it. Incidentally he is a pretty handy cookie with tools.”

The rail preservation movement and the tourist railroad craze gathered momentum during the 1960s. The Rahway Valley’s former No. 15 returned to active service in June 1962, to haul tourists on F. Nelson Blount’s Monadnock, Steamtown & Northern Railroad. That operation ran over a portion of the Boston & Maine Railroad’s Cheshire Branch in New Hampshire. Clark was able to supply Blount’s staff with sufficient information about No. 15 to secure a flue time extension from the Interstate Commerce Commission. Clark wrote to a friend, “Our mutual friend, Blount, has been bothering the very devil out of me the last few months for information on #15 . . . This engine, and especially the tender, was in very good condition when sold to the Cranberry King [Blount] as she worked very little for us after a very complete overhaul in the Jersey Central Shops, Elizabethport, NJ, at a cost of around $10,000.00. I do believe that he will have trouble with the boiler as no doubt the flues are very badly pitted from corrosion.”

Locally, several tourist railroads began in earnest. The Black River & Western Railroad was founded by William R. “Bill” Whitehead in 1960, and leased a lightly used branch line of the CNJ in Chester, New Jersey, to operate tourist trains hauled by an ex-DL&W steam locomotive, No. 565. In October 1960, Whitehead and several associates took the uninspected locomotive out on an unauthorized test run, with men and children clinging to the engine. The CNJ and the Interstate Commerce Commission reacted unfavorably to the shenanigans and shut down the operation. The branch line itself was torn up in 1962.

George Clark viewed many preservationists and tourist railroad operators with skepticism, dismissing them as amateurs who took the complexities and realities of railroad operations far too lightly. Even Blount, whom Clark eventually came to like, was initially regarded as unimpressive. Whitehead, in particular, was described by Clark as a “krackpot.”

Link also acquired ex-Rutland No. 255, a combination baggage and passenger car (called a “combine” in railroad parlance), which he intended to restore. In the spring of 1961, he approached Clark about storing the car on the Rahway Valley Railroad at Kenilworth, where he hoped to work on it. Clark initially dismissed Link as a phoney but gradually warmed to him. Permission to store the combine was granted on June 9, 1961. Link later wrote, “I enjoyed our visit today and I thank you most sincerely for your generous offer to store my combine. Here is some literature that will interest you. I forgot to leave it with you and I think you should have it as proof that I am not a phoney. But I can’t deny that I am a little nuts.”

The 62-foot combine had been built in 1898 for the Ogdensburgh & Lake Champlain Railroad, which became part of the Rutland Railroad in 1901. It arrived at Aldene one day in the fall of 1961. The car was picked up during the regular interchange and set out on the storage track alongside the engine house in Kenilworth. An extension cord run from the engine house provided electricity for Link’s slow and methodical restoration work, a point of irritation for Clark, who occasionally remarked about who was paying the electric bill. The green-and-yellow combine, partially protected by tarps, remained a familiar sight in Kenilworth for several years.

Clark wrote of the project, “I really like ‘Krackpot Link’ who has been pharting around making repairs to his old Rutland RR coach during the past few months. Just what in ‘L’ he has in mind I do not know as while we are very good friends the fact remains that he is very secretive.”

Over time, Link became friendly not only with Clark but also with George Davis. His visits to Kenilworth were so frequent that Bob Clark’s young daughter, Patty, long assumed that he worked for the railroad. Bob Clark’s wife, Corinne, later recalled, “He was such a nice man.” Link drove an antique Ford Model A, which was often seen parked near the Kenilworth office. Later, when George Davis retired in 1972, Link served as official photographer at his retirement party.

On at least two occasions, Link requested that the combine be taken to Union so it could be turned on the wye. This allowed him access to the opposite side of the car, away from the engine house wall, and made restoration work easier.

Clark’s attitude toward preservationists appears to have softened further as an additional piece of historic equipment arrived at Kenilworth. Around 1967, he permitted the owner of a former Central Railroad of New Jersey wooden caboose to store it alongside Link’s combine. The caboose, numbered 913-something, was built around 1904 on the frame and structure of a New Jersey Southern Railroad boxcar that dated to about 1874 and rode on arch-bar trucks. It had been modernized with a steel underframe in the early 1920s, and its original board sheathing was replaced with plywood during World War II. The caboose arrived at Aldene, and when the Rahway Valley crew picked it up, it was kept at the rear of the freight train for the remainder of the day purely for amusement. This practice was repeated a few times before the car was finally set out in Kenilworth.

In March 1963, Clark casually remarked to a newspaper reporter that, given the decline in the Rahway Valley’s freight tonnages, “I suppose I could turn it into a little railroad for tourists. But that’s not my concern. I’m still interested in the freight business.” 

Ironically, the Rahway Valley had at least one opportunity to host tourist trains. The Morris County Central Railroad began operations in 1965 over the Morristown & Erie Railroad out of Whippany, New Jersey, hauling passengers behind a restored former Southern Railway 2-8-0 “Consolidation”-type steam locomotive. As part of Summit’s centennial celebrations in April 1969, excursion trains were planned to operate over the Erie Lackawanna’s Gladstone Branch between Summit and Berkeley Heights using Morris County Central equipment. The Morris County Central offered to extend operations onto the Rahway Valley as well, but the offer was declined.