Walking The Newark Branch -The Movie
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- Опубликовано: 29 окт 2021
- Buy the book! tinyurl.com/k7cehyw4
One hundred fifty years of railroad history abandoned and left to rot in place provides the backdrop for Wheeler Antabanez as he walks the Newark Branch of the Erie Railroad. This movie is based on the book, Walking the Newark Branch A Photographic Journey on the Abandoned Rails of New Jersey.
The adventure begins on a rainy winter's day as Wheeler infiltrates deep into the Meadowlands to find the exact spot where the Erie Newark Branch emerges from the Old Boonton Line. As the expedition unfolds, Wheeler investigates such forsaken landmarks as the abandoned WNEW radio transmitter, Clark Thread Mill, NX Bridge, Riverside Industrial Superfund Site, Walter Kidde Brownfield Site, the Nutley Train Trestle, and many more.
The abandoned Newark Branch of the Erie Railroad runs through the towns of Kearny, Harrison, East Newark, Newark, Belleville, Nutley, and Clifton. Walking the Newark Branch depicts Wheeler's journey as he treads the entire length of the unused rail line and photographs everything in his path. The images in the book and movie provide a rare glimpse into an obscure world of abandonment that exists in plain sight but is often overlooked.
Brought to you by Abandoned Books, LLC - All Rights Reserved - For more information visit: abandonedbooks.org
Advance Praise for the book Walking the Newark Branch:
Wheeler Antabanez is a true poet of the wreckage. Everything he produces has a raw beauty. Walking the Newark Branch takes us into American back country: places that go unmarked and unseen, places that our eyes flit past without registering them. This is America's dark twin, and Wheeler seeks her out and interviews her. If you like rust and graffiti and crumbling asphalt-abandoned places reclaimed by nature of all kinds-you'll love this book. Wheeler is an explorer for the post-industrial age.
-Cal Flyn, Author of Islands of Abandonment - Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape
In Walking The Newark Branch, Wheeler Antabanez captures the beauty of abandoned isolation and the rusting relics of industries past. Through this book, we take a journey with Wheeler exploring the desolate New Jersey tracks of the once-great Erie Railroad. The photographs reveal the loneliness and devastated landscape that remains.
-Mark Sceurman, Co-Publisher of Weird NJ
New Jersey tries to hide its scars in plain sight. Wheeler dives headfirst into said scars and shows us their hidden, toxic beauty. God bless this stoned lunatic.
-Chris Gethard, Actor, Author, Comedian
Those strange sites and places you see from the window of the train as you travel into New York City... Wheeler's probably been there turning over rocks... Wheeler explores the deepest, dirtiest liminal spaces deep within the greatest liminal state in the nation, showing us that it's the forgotten and forlorn places that have the most interesting stories to tell.
-Brian Donohue, Host of Positively New Jersey on News 12 New Jersey
This remarkable journey will awaken in your mind the forgotten historic railroad of Newark and surrounding areas. Wheeler brings New Jersey's abandoned landscape back to life with mesmerizing photographs that often eclipse the power of the written word.
-The Amazing Kreskin, World's Foremost Mentalist
Buy the book! tinyurl.com/k7cehyw4 
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The peace and isolation of following abandoned tracks, towpaths and roads, can be restorative for the soul. I think I understand where you're at, brother.
Im a retired federal officer that was based in Newark; I thoroughly appreciated this video as I constantly traversed theses area over a 30 year period. Now retired in Florida it made me a little melancholy with so many memories. None the less it is excellent work thank you.
Amazing how the Passaic river was treated as nothing more than a liquid garbage dump through Newark and Arlington....now its beyond repair with the level of dioxins known to persist for about 7 miles along that stretch. Great vid, been through the area myself for work. Be careful along the river, don't get exposed.
worked on, and walked every inch of this line back in the 80's for njtro
I'm in massachusetts but was born in jersey and still.have family there...all these areas you explore are familiar...cool stuff..
Im from kearny and we played there 50 yrs ago it is def toxic pollution BUTT try going down after a snowstorm its most beautiful place u could imagine silent as it gets
Brings back memories. Grew up in Kearny and spent much of my youth in the Meadowlands. Dirt biking, beers on the tracks. Although it's a cess pool, I always loved it cause it was home. Adventured the Annie Bridge with my cousin but lacked the balls to climb it. My cousin did. He was always a psycho but unfortunately didn't survive as long as me. ENJOYED your vid, keep it up!
Just watched the movie and halfway through the book, Wheeler. I can’t thank you enough for documenting these abandoned tracks. I grew up in Secaucus and spent my childhood exploring abandoned buildings, garbage dumps where we were sometimes trapped by the rising tide on the Hacky (the Hackensack River), the dams that some folks in the 1800s built to hopefully turn the salt marshes into farmland, hunter’s trails through the tall weeds, finding tent pegs and other abandoned artifacts where soldiers once camped next to the rail lines waiting to be shipped to war in Europe, the foundry on Sauer Island, Snake Hill when the poor house was still there, seeing streams polluted with unnatural greens and blues from industrial waste, the constant slightly acrid smells on a good day and the pervasive smoky miasma from underground fires in East Rutherford and Jersey City on bad days, and garbage and decay everywhere I went. It was wonderful and your film and book brought back so many memories of those times. I also found it interesting that your walk took you within a few hundred yards of the Coeyman Family Burial Ground, a tiny square plot of grass surrounded by industrial buildings in the area of Verona & Riverside Avenues in North Newark. The Coeyman Family Burial Ground was an obsession of mine a few years ago when I spent a considerable amount of time researching lost North Jersey graveyards. Anyway, thank you again, Wheeler! Best of luck with the book!
glad you liked it. would love to hear more about the burial ground!
I think your knowledge of this area is amazing . I'm from Newark and always found that area of North Newark fascinating !!!!
Wheeler! Hello. I know that you remember my comment on the Boonton Line. I believe that Walter
J. Kidde (the flag-pole monument) was the owner and founder of the Kidde Fire Extinguisher Company. The abandoned lines are a time machine where one enters and the present-day world temporarily diffuses into time and space as we return back to a place where it is still 1870! At Deadman's Tunnel we are in the1850's. Nothing much has changed there since then. The past years dwell here in the air and in the atmosphere. I understand what you mean when you say that you can’t reach out and they can’t reach you. I have been there many times. We exit the time machine through the Bergen Arches, even though I have walked through Long Dock many times. Follow the tracks past Harsimus Cemetery, and now non-existant Waldo Tower, back to the streets of downtown Jersey City. The journey ends at 2023! Thank you and I appreciate the time, effort, & dedication you have put in the making of the Newark and Boonton videos & researching the history for your books. I never thought that I would see or visit the old railroads again. I am too old now (70) to walk through the time machine anymore. Thanks Again
Excellent video, Wheeler! I am the next to last Agent on the Newark Branch at Franklin Avenue . A.A. (Al) DeVito was the very last. It breaks my heart to see. Many great memories working on the railroad.
34:35 The Erie originally continued straight the concrete underpass underneath the Lackawanna main (where you now see the NJT trains) and that straight road now occupies the Erie ROW.
When Erie merged with DL&W to form Erie Lackawanna, the parallel lines were eliminated & the Newark Branch was cut back & this former interchange became the new end of the Newark-paterson branch.
i was on the b&b gang that fenced the row along rt 7 back in the early 80's
The movie 🍿 is a complete home run for the likes of an urban decay explorer such as myself !
SMASHING like buttons everywhere on this one !!
Gotta get the book !!!
GREAT JOB 👏
Walter Kidde was a Hoboken native who opened Walter Kidde & Company which helped build shipyards at Port Newark and Kearny. He later joined the New Jersey State Highway Commission. During his time there, he oversaw the first traffic circle in Camden, the first clover-leaf intersection and most importantly the Pulaski Skyway in 1932. Even though he had no railroad experience, Walter Kidde was the court appointed trustee of the bankrupt New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway from July 24, 1937 until his death in 1943. He was probably best known for developing fire suppression equipment (fire extinguishers!) Sad to see his monument in Belleville is now totally forgotten.
also it’s now totally gone. the property is being developed
Excellent! Cabbage night treat
Everywhere you go the Passaic River is with you, because you are the Passaic River whisperer
Grew up doing this in Union County, Roselle, Linden, Rahway, Cranford, Elizabeth and Roselle Park. Walking the Creeks, Rivers and Tracks.
36:49 shop rite used to be pathmark; but before that, it was Westinghouse. Memories of breaking in, destruction, and running from the cops... TY for the memories! Peace
Very cool. Always wondered about that little radio station building, but also about the abandoned tracks running beneath I-95. Thanks for doing the leg work.
The "Smells" of NJ!
I’m a retired NYCT motorman I like the video I try walking the abandoned rockaway branch of LIRR a part of the line is now a parking lot
This was amazing. Who else is looking back at wheeler’s older content because of this? Who can forget the classic video that is “Wheeler on the Passaic”
I seen that it's good
Spent the entire video going "I know where that is, I know where that is, I know where that is"
30:20 Used to buy cigarettes at the Nutley Pub there for 75 cents from their machine back in the day!
A writer from Delware who lives in Philly now. Hope you stop on by for a visit. Newark Delaware. Sycamore Gardens then later Fox Run Apartments and finally, here, in downtown Philly 🙏
Sad, isn't it? All along those abandoned tracks are the ruins of what made the United States an industrial superpower, strong enough to save Europe in World War One and then the rest of the world in World War Two. Even the railroad's not needed anymore.
Maybe the reasons for those derelict factories are good, maybe not so good. Or maybe they were like the dinosaurs, they couldn't adapt and died out. Tragic.
Nothing left but mystery and history.
Great film Wheeler! A very enjoyable 40 minutes! Better than most of the crap on TV now!
Another Great Video
28:44 Jimmy Cox used to live down in that hole; if it's the one I think it is by high street in nutley. Went in once, and it was a good sized room!
If you had followed the Newark Branch r-o-w straight under the Boonton Line trestle you would have followed th original Newark Branch r-o-w to Hazel St. The Erie sold that mile or so to Passaic to make Kuller Rd. You could also go to the Erie Market St. Station and explore the "lower level," the three or four tracks west of the Main Line where most Newark Branch trains originated in the 1950's.
Yes, interesting - I'm from Clifton and Wayne - old timers used to talk about the spot where the Boonton Line tracks went over the Newark Branch tracks. I know that spot - in the 70's when I lived in Clifton I used to take Kuller Road sometimes - you could see where the Newark Branch came in underneath the "Main Line". The DLW also had a sizable freight yard along the Boonton Line in Clifton serving industrial users - I think they even had a turntable. You could see the ghost of the old yard in winter when passing through that area on a commuter train.
When the whole world goes mad
What do you do?
I'm going to go walk the tracks man
Why not?
Trying to find some direction
Makes perfect sense
My thumbs up was # 420. how appropriate! Love this! Such memories! I sent you an email today about walter kidde site in belleville... Peace
I grew up in North Jersey, but now live in Colorado. I enjoy natural as well as urban landscapes. Your videos show an amazing view of what makes Jersey. The abandon trails you walk is a living museum of old industry, junk we produce, but still an artistic treasure of graffiti and other human expression.
One of the cities I grew up in was Clifton, just outside of Nutley. I remember that old railroad bridge and the park below. My dad commuted to Hoboken from the Delawanna train station. Just down the street was elementary School #8, right across the street from the Minwax plant, that produced stains and varnishes. Can you image all the crap air we were breathing?
Thank you Wheeler. Where was the "End of Track" sign? I've viewed photos of NS on this line about 7 years ago by the abandoned Cleveland St. Station in Belleville.
secaucus
Dystopian! I love it. (grew up in North Newark)
I love abandoned railroad history. I used to work in an interlocking tower, would had retired there if they had not closed it down. Sadly the railroad has abandoned the ways of old and alot of infrastructure has been left to waste away.
And the station at 33:33 appears to be the old Clifton Station (currently On-Track Chiropractor on Clifton Road). I had no idea there were ANY stations left on this line!
Athena Station. Was a Bank back in the early '70s.
Jersey transit is looking into service between Paterson and Newark on that branch maybe light rail hope it happens.
We’re almost at the starting point
My mother was working near that bridge when they filmed Annie. She said it was a male midget in the bridge scene. She also said her boss charged the film crew for use of the bridge, even though he didn't own it
Just bought both of your books. Thank you for your documentaries.
thanks for the support! enjoy
Great video ❤
The station you stumbled upon at 33:20 into the video may have been the old Allwood Station, since it is located just off Station Road.
Another amazing travelogue! Just bought the book from Amazon and can’t wait for the movie. Nightshade on the Passaic is one of my favorites and is right here next to me on my bookshelf. Thank you, Wheeler, for your dedication to NJ’s hidden history.
Very cool I grew up along these tracks in Clifton and I remember trains on them
Wheeler Antabanez is the fuckin' man
Great work on the video. Walter Kidde was the founder of the company that produced fire extinguishers and eventually smoke alarms.
Looking at the ruins of the Kidde empire all I could think of was a line from the Shelley poem:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings! Look at my works ye mighty, and despair!"
Another phrase crossed my mind, "Sic transit gloria mundi," or "So passes worldly glory."
3:00 Remnants of an old AM radio station.
If you look on the sides of the rails you can see the date that rail was manufactured.
Nice Job brings back old memories. One thing you should know is that not far from the old Erie line is where the Blow Job was invented. Not many people know that but it is to be expected of New Jersey. It's why Washington crossed the Deleware.
I don't think the line is totally abandoned. There is a factory, Van Ness, on Brighton Rd in Clifton that still gets cars delivered fairly regularly. There was a string of hoppers there just a couple weeks ago
yes that is true
I was glad to see that. I grew up in Clifton and spent a lot of time exploring and playing around those tracks, but never walked them further than Roche in Nutley. Very cool project Wheeler, and very well done. Would have been sad to see them totally dead
Down behind the old Astro Bowl near the rt. 3 bridge was an algae covered pond and we used to take discarded bowling pins and other things throw them in and watch them get engulfed by the slime and disappear. That whole area is so different now.
Came here after watching the Boonton Line video. Good stuff.
Damn this is sad that a old Erie Lackawanna line got abandoned just like that like the old boonton keep up the good work.
This was an impressive film and the book looks amazing. Thanks so much for sharing!
I didn't realize until I watched your video that the Belleville Station (at Essex Street) has survived! I think it is now Me & Tony's Restaurant and Bar - it appears around 19:36 into the video. This line should have been restored and turned into an extension of Newark's light rail system north to Paterson via Belleville and Nutley.
they might still turn it into a light rail from newark to paterson amp.northjersey.com/amp/7830088002
This is exactly what I want to do - document the present with a look at the past & future. Really well done!
There's something about you that is very authentically Jersey... I'm looking forward to seeing more of your content after reading some of your Weird NJ articles!
I'm actually planning to do the same thing with my buddies.
Idk when I was in high school I used to like hanging out at the abandoned train tracks until they started being more vigilant and put fences up by Kearny 🤷♀️
Great!
I'm glad someone's shining a light on this abandoned rail branch. I'd put a proposal out to NJ Transit a while back to restore service as an extension of the Newark light rail system, which could possibly tie into the Hudson Bergen Light Rail in Jersey City too, and give North Jersey a true alternative to automotive traffic!
17:49 Smokin’ your lucky cigarette 🚬
Lookin forward to this one... I love any kind of jersey lore. Reading 13 from the swamp rn. I've been taking trips on the hawg into the "worst parts of Newark" (according to google) after I get out of work around 9~10pm only to return home with some wacky stories. This is right down my alley!
My nephew is Coe he tagged them buildings few yrs ago
In the 60s the Kearny marsh waa our woods. Used to i.agime wild boar out there. Rode a minibike on the turnpike before it opened
Make this into a bike path park. Clean it up.
Very cool video. Props to you. I've been fascinated by old RR tracks forever. Have you heard of the Lackawanna Cutoff near Hopactcong? It was a marvel of engineering when built. You should check it out.
I will check it out!
@@WheelerAntabanez Just stay off the Paulinskill Viaduct portion of the Cutoff. It's a "No Tresspassing" zone and to my understanding it's being enforced with a vengeance.
Also, parts of the Cutoff are being revitalized by NJ Transit, a good thing, so be careful out there!
You know where LA Fitness is in Kearny - Passaic Ave. That used to be Pathmark before. I remember there were abandoned rail tracks by the loading dock. Also where BJs and those new stores are now, they were old factory buildings before. There were also abandoned rail tracks there. Was that part of the Newark branch? Maybe on the time when it was converted from passenger line to freight train line
yes those tracks are the newark branch. i walked right by there...
I've driven along those tracks in my Bronco. Its s fun drive.
My ancestors built the clark buildings and the OLD smokestack was once the tallest structure in america the original one is gone now
theres such big demand for housing in the NY metro area. Why can't thse abandoned sites in Newark become a riverside development with housing, stores, offices? Can those tracks be used for light rail or any commuter rail?
I can’t wait, this is going to be epic! Definitely gonna watch it when it premieres! And it’s a perfect time! Love your books 📚
I think it will be a little bit epic! Thanks for your support! see you at the premiere!!!
Peace ✌🏻 nj732
That looks like a awsome travel , dope video . Thanks
Ps wasnt there bodies from mental asylum by that bridge in seacacus (?)
Think you could cover the Newark PPG spot? It's also been a spot on my radar for a while, but I hear its been covered/fenced up?
I’m Near The Newark Branch And I Saw A Highrail On The Line
Great video I have read a lot about the Newark branch during Erie Lackawanna times,what is the name of your book and we're can I get it I now live in pa.grew up on the greenwood lake branch in pompton plains you should do a video on the old line
thank you! the book is called walking the newark branch. www.amazon.com/dp/0578952300/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=walking+the+newark+branch&qid=1633114524&sr=8-2
Can u do the old central jersey rail road tracks down ironbound newark by east side hs stadium
working on an Old Boonton Line book and movie now. should be out in october
The radio station use to be "WMCA"
33;21 that is the old erie athenia depot
Where can I purchase the book I already have the magazine but would love the book also
thanks! here is a link www.amazon.com/dp/B0BGNC7T2W
Graffiti is very disconcerting!
why is this guy on the belleville line? btw ..mill st was the site of a huge station once
Hoffa is buried under the Pulaski Skyway
Ever go to the Devils Hole in North Jersey?
yes. this vid shows it ruclips.net/video/zktNKObgMuc/видео.html
@@WheelerAntabanez Nice, you gotta dive that thing figure out the depth.
@@onthemound mark Moran from weird nj dove it with a professional diver. issue 31 I think...
I don't know what's worse, the urban blight or those cookie cutter "new constructions"
ruclips.net/video/wn1jLgM0q30/видео.html
Is this an "event"? There doesn't appear to be any point in scheduling something 50+ days away unless it is a pretty big deal.
October 30th at 9:00 PM - Book and Video release at AbandonedBooks.org
Antabanez, been about that North Jersey life 😃
ask anybody in South Jersey