The Lehigh Valley Railroad in 1872 was running through Franklin Township and had a station in Landsdown. On March 6, 1890 the Pittstown Branch Railroad Company decided that a branch line was needed to run into Pittstown. By November 1890 the Company had purchased all the land necessary to build the branch line. April 2, 1891 over 100 men began the work on the branch line. The grand opening of the Pittstown Branch Line was held on the 4th of July in 1891. The line ran off of the Lehigh Valley main line from Landsdown. The engine was named NANCY!

The Pittstown Station was a very important shipping station because Pittstown had a large peach crop industry. The peaches were shipped to Easton, Pennsylvania by train; this was a major business for the railroad and made them a lot of money. Sometime around the turn of the century blight destroyed the peach industry.

In 1903 the Pittstown Milk Association was formed and they began shipping milk to Brooklyn, New York. Thus keeping the railroad busy. Somewhere in the 1920's the Association stopped using the train.

At some point during these great shipping years the state would send an inspector from the New Jersey Weights and Measures Division to check the accuracy of the Pittstown scales. During a period of time my Great Grand dad, Samuel Christie, was the person sent to do this job. Great Grand dad later became the head of the Weights and Measure Department.

With more roadways being built, trucks were faster and cheaper to send things to other places. By the 1960's most families in this area had a car. In 1968 the Lehigh Valley Railroad tried to close the Pittstown Station. In 1969 the station was closed, for a while there was talk of putting an airport in the land owned by the railroad. Lucky for us this never happened.

In 1970 the Lehigh Valley Railroad went bankrupted. Conrail took over the 1,100 miles of railroad in 1976. Today the rail lines are owned by the Franklin Township on their way to Allentown.

The Railroad Station today from the outside looks haunted, because it is so old. As I was walking towards the train station it struck me with deep sorrow that not much is left of our railroad history. From the side the building does not look like a station, but walking toward the front it is clear that it is a train station. The front square window area was standard on most stations.

The station appears to be solid. It was well built using a minimum 4x4 wood pieces instead of today's standard 2x 4 construction. Instead of today's plywood the outside is made up of 1x6 and 1x10 wood pieces. The foundation seems to be very good. The brick chimney in the center of the building also seems to be in solid shape. The roof is made out of slate, which is a type of rock. It is in need of repair, but could be fixed. There is some water damage in the building due to missing slates. The building was never modernized. This I could tell from the remaining knob and tube wiring

Unfortunately, the building has been vandalized. The usual graffiti is there, but it tore my heart to see that someone had made a fire in the building. We couldn't tell when this happened, but I would guess it occurred within the last four years. I am guessing this due to the differences in the wood.

I would love to see fixing this building become a Cub Scout project. I think volunteers could fix the building without spending millions of dollars.

The Station Masters House

The station master was the person in charge of keeping the station neat and tidy. he was in charge of the schedules, and overseeing the passengers and freight. The station master's house was in fact his home.

There is one door into the house. This put us in a very small closet like area. It was only 2 feet wide. The back room was larger, but still very small. there was no floor in this area. it had collapsed revealing a deep hole underneath.

This building is in very bad condition due to the missing floor, but the slate roof was mostly intact. It did seem to have quite a few loose tiles.

It was not easy to walk around the back of the house, but I wanted to know all about the house. There was some guessing going on about what we would find and sure enough we found the outhouse. Not just any old outhouse, but a two door men and ladies) outhouse both with double seats!

Now here comes the interesting part, maybe the land has changed but to bet to the doors you must walk up a steep bank and down at the bottom of the bank is a stream. From what I could see the outhouse contents would travel down this little hill into the stream. This is gross and a big pollution problem. I would not have wanted to drink any water at this station. Also, I think of the poor station manger who had to live on top of the pit.

The station closed in 1969, It was surprising that we found no evidence of modern plumbing.

I think it would have been fun to ride our branch line, but not to use the outhouse.

Following are some pictures of the station and the station master's house as they are today.

I have also included some pictures of engines and rail cars that are similar to what was used on this Pittstown branch over the years.

I found some maps at the library and on the Internet showing the proposed Lehigh Valley Line through Franklin Township and later showing the Lehigh Valley and Pittstown, Clinton Branch Line.

Kimberly
Spring, 2000