Hike #394; Lower Sussex Railroads

 Hike #394 1/11/9

1/11/9 Lower Sussex Railroads with Jillane Becker, Shelly Janes, Jason Itell, "DJ Ray" Cordts, Christina Manley, "Amish Paul" and Wyatt Hassler, Matt Davis, Kyle Zalinsky, Rich Pace, "Commando Tom" Petrucci, Dave Finton, Larry Butler, Jim "Mr. Buckett" Mathews, and Eric Pace.

xoxoxo love

The group along the Lackawanna Cutoff

Unfortunitely the original journal entry to this one was lost to the fire. If anyone has it please let me know!

Word

Along Lackawanna Cutoff

Goofing off along the Cutoff

Lackawanna Cutoff

Lackawanna Cutoff

Jilllane and I

Lackawanna Cutoff building

Sliding in Byram

Sliding

Lackawanna Cutoff

Roseville Tunnel

Roseville Tunnel

Along Lackawanna Cutoff

Tower at Landing

I'd done this hike before, and was planning on doing it again to cover the rest of the Lackawanna Cutoff before it was reactivated (as it turns out I didn't need to be in a hurry). Instead of a big 22 mile loop though we left some cars at the Path Mark I think it was near Hopatcong State Park where we'd finished a recent hike and then shuttled back to Netcong to start.

The beginning of the hike was to be on the old Sussex Branch line, mostly now a trail, from Netcong north. We did the beginning of this a bit differently than I'd done it in the past, first following the original west bound track of the former Morris and Essex Railroad. Previous hikes I'd never walked this little stretch.

We followed this and we turned right heading through a piece of private property heading north. I think a cop stopped DJ Ray as we were walking, but I was already too far ahead. He explained to him what we were doing and I guess it was okay.

We walked by the concrete structure I'd passed before, I think it was possibly an old bomb shelter. We walked through some weedy stuff out to another road with a nice historic truss bridge and tuned left. I think the road might have been Kelly Place. We followed this out to Love Lane where one abutment remained from the Sussex Branch (actually a cutoff to the Sussex Branch to connect with the eastbound main line in Stanhope, completed in 1901).

We walked up Love Lane to the ITC and crossed the abandoned bridge parallel with the road, then turned along Contenental Drive with the paved path along it, formerly the rail line route.

We followed this line north to the main Sussex Trail head, then we headed north. There was a lot of snow on the ground which made it tough to walk. Still, we were able to keep with it along Cranberry Lake where we stopped for a break at a store. We continued on to the Lackawanna Cutoff and climbed to the top, then headed east. Wyatt kept wrestling with Commando Tom, and "whitewashed" him with snow. We stopped for a long break when we reached Roseville Tunnel and knocked down a ton of icesicles.

After this point Matt and Dave went way ahead of us. We waited behind a bit near a new trail bridge that was being built in Byram Township and slid down the edge of the cut like a sled for a while. We also stopped to check out a little abandoned building in this vicinity as well.

Jillane and I were having a really nice time together here. It was a great day feeling close to her.

Once we reached the end of the line in Landing we went to check out the old tower next to the rail yard. There was unfortunitely no way in. We walked from there along some ATV paths which took us out behind the Path Mark to finish the hike.