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Railbuses | |||||||||
Fans of the Rahway Valley Railroad might be surprised
to learn that at one point in time the RV owned a pair of railbuses.
Passenger service on the RV had taken a down turn. By
1911 passenger receipts only amounted to $3,480, down from $4,693 in
1910 (Source: Railroad and Canal Reports). The RV couldn't seem to
justify the expense of running its passenger trains for only a
paltry amount of money. Louis Keller, who built the railroad to
transport passengers to his golf club, must have scoffed at the
thought of possibly abolishing passenger
service. In 1912, RV management began pondering with the idea
of substituting its regular passenger trains with a railbus, or two.
A "railbus," as railroaders call them, come in many different shapes
and sizes. Basicly you can think of a railbus, as well, a bus but
with flanged wheels. Railroads, of varying sizes, found railbuses
appealing to use on lines where passenger service was
marginal. Harry Dankel, the RV's General Manager, approached the
Railway Motor Car Company of Marion, Indiana with interest in
possibly purchasing a railbus. In July of 1912 the railbus outfit
sent a railbus for a trial run over the RV, "A new 100-horse power
gasoline motor car is being demonstrated on the Rahway Valley R.R. .
. . with a view to its adoption for general use in caring for the
passenger service over the line from Summit to Aldene (Cranford
Citizen, July 25, 1912). Evidently, the Rahway Valley Railroad made this
purchased and numbered this trolley-like railbus #10. Later on, but
not known exactly when, the Rahway Valley Railroad purchased a Mack
railbus. Mack, more well known today as truck manufacturers, built
rail cars and locomotives from 1905 to 1930. Whether the RV
purchased directly the railbus from Mack, or secondhand, is unknown.
The RVRR acquired its second railbus, however, and numbered it #11.
Bill Young tells us more of the history of these
buses, "At this time Keller bought two gasoline combines ---- jitney
buses, the railroaders called them---- and put them into service,
knocking off all steam varnish runs. For a time Number Ten and
Number Eleven, with motors inside, did well. They ran up the branch
and up the main line as far as Baltusrol. There were turntables at
Baltusrol, Hilton [Newark Heights], and Kenilworth, for them, with a
little wooden roundhouse at the latter point. In 1914, however, a
Millburn, N.J. trucker won the RV’s old mail contract away from the
line. Keller discarded the railcars, which had handled the mail, and
put his old three car train back on to Summit " ("Doin' Fine
Thanks!," William S. Young, The Crown Sheet, September
1944). Between what the news article tells us, and Young's
account of the railbuses, we can surmise that the height of the use
of the railbuses on the Rahway Valley Railroad was from 1912 to
1914. #10 might have been discarded right away, but #11 seems to of
hung around a bit longer. A photo appears of #11 sitting, in the
Kenilworth Yard, on a side track.
Regardless of what the fate of the Rahway Valley Railroad's
two railbuses may have been, they are an interesting part of this
railroad's story
nonetheless.
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