Cape May County's Beach Railroads

Cape May County in New Jersey is a scenic ocean-side city forming a portion of the Atlantic Ocean coastline. It's had a unique and rather detailed railroad history too. As interurban railroads began to make their mark within the area during the late 1870s, the larger mainline railroads were able to link Philadelphians with the scenic views of Cape May, New Jersey, with the interurbans providing local transport. The interurbans linking up with steamships also provided ease of transit into the city as well. However, Cape May's railroad history is probably most noted for the mysterious "ghost tracks" of Sunset Beach. Those ghost tracks once were host of industrial railroading activities parallel to the Delaware Bay near the Atlantic Ocean. Sand mining, munitions testing, and a magnesite plant were all part of the ghost tracks' history. In this video I take a brief look into the history of Cape May's railroads, and the general story of the city's ghost tracks.

Music Used:
Sonic Lost World - Tropical Coast Zone (Act 1)
Kirby Star Stacker - King Dedede (Slow Version)
Sonic Lost World - Juice Archipelago
Sonic Adventure - Windy and Ripply
Deltarune - Spamton

Links:

[alanthefisher]

South Jersey has alot of weird and obscure railroad history, Cape May and the shore towns having some of the most unique services. Great video!

[nathancorcoran]

Pretty cool video of the Cape May County’s Beach Railroads. This is like the Santa Cruz Big Trees & Pacific Railroad line that was formerly used for the Santa Cruz and Felton Railroad in 1875 as a 3-foot narrow gauge line, then the South Pacific Coast Railroad in 1876 (a year later), and the Southern Pacific in 1887 being converted to standard gauge.

[christopherorourke]

The Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines had passenger train service into Cape May in 1968. I had a Summer 1968 Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines railroad timetable of passenger trains. Between Philadelphia & Atlantic City it had 8 daily trains, between Philadelphia & Cape May it had 4 trains & between Camden & Millville it had 2 trains. I lived in Elwood, New Jersey from Saturday, December 14, 1963 to Saturday, June 21, 1969.

[Pensyfan]

Great video! Also, nice to see that the Pennsy had a steam tram at 0:34.

[CapitolStudios]

Great Video! This is some of my local history! The tip of South Jersey (Cape May, Rio Grande, and Wildwood to name a few) all had really interesting railroad and traction history. This is the first video I've seen covering the topic. Really good job!

[Snj_productions]

The Cape May seashore lines Is doing passenger service and the occasional freight service. Freight service goes from Tuckahoe NJ to the old Winslow junctio

[gamerfan]

A New Jersey my self. I happy someone is talking about cape may

[Lucat_Here]

It’s a good day when Amtrak guy uploads but now I’m 80% sure he saw my QNA comment cuz he had 2 Komi photos in it witch made it better

[NorthPennValleySteamRR]

Cape May hasn’t seen a train since 2012, when CMSL’s track was vandalized. Hopefully they fix the track in the coming years.

[BB_Sebring]

Love this video, just goes to show the interesting history that might be lying under our feet and we just don't know it yet. Also the Komi-san gif at 2:27 was just perfect

[AirchimeLTDproductions]

Fantastic content Jared, as a fellow New Jerseyian it's wonderful to see the Railroad history of South Jersey receive the attention it deserves.

[danielboone]

I never new there were beach railroads. This is amazing! I'm starting to feel inspired by this.

[DerpyPossum]

i was wondering how viable the concept of a beach railroad would be, and now i know. thx 👍

[SSkat]

On the thomas runaways video, you should’ve included the flying kipper. It’s one of the best crashes, and you can tell its a runaway when they realise henry isn’t going to stop in time to completely BRANNHBGVDCGVFCT the breakvan

[rustynail]

Really good video! Only thing I would say is that there is no evidence that the sand plant rail line was ever used as a munitions testing ground.

[MrHand-msut]

I've seen the tracks before. Pretty cool looking.

[Benthetrainkid]

New Jersey Transit should restore rail service to Wildwood and Cape May, NJ

[sernajrlouis]

Cool video. Glad I'm a subscriber

[mikemancini]

If you're in that area. You can fight lots if remaining railroad on Broadway Street in Cape May that was also not torn up to this day. The railroad are now in people's backyards and they use the remaining tracks to build sheds and other things. I'm not kidding.

[CrossOfBayonne]

I've been to Cape May but have never seen the tracks that popped up out on the sand, It was used for transporting freight and munitions before it closed in the 1930s.