Will a Railroad Ever Serve This County?

It takes a long time for change to happen in Cape May County. Looking at the June 16, 1999 bound edition for the Back Then feature on Page 3 today stirred some rusty memories.
In particular, there was a photograph of Cape May Seashore Lines’ first train crossing Cape May Canal. It was to be the first of several trains a day to make the trek into the Nation’s Oldest Seashore Resort. Such an auspicious day that was, it possessed all the gallantry of a king’s coming, especially to Cape May.
There was hope, albeit short-lived, that rail service would return to this lonely peninsula. Local officials looked into the future and saw masses boarded onto passenger cars traveling down the railroad through Cape May County’s heartland, stopping off in Woodbine and Court House, Rio Grande and Cold Spring.
They would enjoy all the amenities of those stops without wasting gasoline or clogging the highways with more cars. Some of us recalled days of yesteryear when at least two trains took passengers north and brought them home.
Yes, like those lottery frauds that come in the mail that we could take countless millions to the bank, it was nothing but an empty hope.
There were a few attempts to revive the notion that the railroad could make it. At times, the service included Halloween “ghost” runs and Santa Claus runs around the Christmas season from Court House to Historic Cold Spring Village.
One bright day in the summer of 2005, the high point of many children’s lives, as Thomas, the tank engine, rode the local rails from the Village to Rio Grande. He was parked in Court House, and became an instant celebrity.
Some homeowners along the rails hated the trains because they blew their horns at crossings and brought smoke and smells. In the railroad’s defense, those rails were there long before most of us came, and they will likely be here long after we’ve checked out, so to complain about them was, to me, like beefing about a farm after you’ve moved into a new development close to a horse farm.
Light rail service, like the one connecting Camden with Trenton makes a lot of sense. Expensive, yes, but so are highways and new cars.
If we could easily get around Cape May County, north to south, on an inexpensive set of rails (that are already in place), what’s not to like about it?
Wouldn’t it be nice to ride down to Cape May on, say, the Fourth of July without giving a hoot about the clogged traffic at the Route 109 (renamed Veterans’ Memorial Bridge)? What about going to the Ocean City Boardwalk without having to travel up the Parkway and find a place to park? Would it not make the quality of life better?
I understand using rails would mean losing some freedom, like deciding when to leave for work. But don’t countless commuters do that every working day of the year? Don’t they leave from around all metropolitan areas and take the train (or light rail) into center city locations, leaving the car parked at home?
Make rail service affordable and readily available and riders will beat a path to the stations. Many times I have complained about local bus service, but ridership is up, and few buses pass my office window that are not fairly full of riders going to Wildwood and Cape May.
The same people who ride those buses would also ride the rails if they were quick, inexpensive and efficient.
Tony Macrie, the man behind Cape May Seashore Lines, has recently felt the pinch of municipal wrath after the derelict passenger cars he had parked in Rio Grande became so covered by graffiti and were used for nefarious purposes by young and old, that he was told to move them out, and he did.
There is still a windowless and spray-painted observation car on the siding at Route 47 in Rio Grande, a silent testimony to what railroads were and are today.
Still, with some paint and new purpose, I can still see that car being used for political speeches up and down Cape May County, what a hook that would be to a populous weary of mud-slinging television commercials in political season.
In 10 or 15 years, someone may read this column, if they are looking for some comment from the early days of the new century. They will see that, by golly, railroads were on someone’s mind back then.
And, since things change slowly, if ever, in Cape May County, they may still be wondering what it would take to get good, viable rail service into this lonely peninsula. We all know many things never change, especially “down here.”