Only Three Blocks from the Job

In 1948, the Township of Union Board of Education undertook an addition to what was then Union High School—today’s Burnet Middle School—on Morris Avenue. During the project, A. T. Mosca, the Rahway Valley Railroad’s General Freight Agent, caught wind of a potential opportunity: roughly thirty-five carloads of brick were slated to move over the Lehigh Valley Railroad for unloading at its Roselle Park team track.

This presented a clear competitive opening. The Rahway Valley interchanged with the Lehigh Valley in the same Roselle Park yard, yet its own Unionbury team track lay only three blocks from the construction site—far more convenient than the LV’s facility, nearly three miles away. Recognizing the chance to secure new business, George A. Clark dispatched Unionbury freight agent Tom Miller to investigate. Miller learned that Daniel J. Cronin of Newark was the general contractor overseeing the project.

Clark wasted no time. He contacted E. T. Ginder, Division Freight Agent for the Central Railroad of New Jersey, to coordinate an effort to divert the traffic to the RV–CNJ routing. Always resourceful, Clark believed that “a railroad dollar was the hardest in the world to come by” and did whatever he could to bring new revenue to his line—even if it meant poaching business from one of his own connecting partners.