Becker Farm Railroad - Whither The C&S?

Whither The C&S?

In the aftermath of the closure of Becker Farm, the railroad was completely dismantled and was placed into storage. Locomotive #1501 was donated to the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan and then later was conveyed into private hands. Its present whereabouts, in 2010, are unknown. Locomotive #1500 was conveyed into private hands in 1965 and was used to operate the Key Western Railroad, a miniature railroad on Higgs Beach in Key West, Florida until 1984. Locomotive #1500, the original locomotive on the C&SRR dating back to 1938, has been rebuilt twice, most recently in 1950 as a switch engine in bright-red livery. The two miles (3 km) of track, with ties attached, and all the rolling stock, as well as diesel locomotive #1503, a larger single-cab diesel locomotive that was built in 1959, and first ran in 1960, eventually made its way to Middletown Township, New Jersey and then later to Phillipsburg, New Jersey. At Phillipsburg, a truncated piece of track is currently in operation during the warmer months which allows #1503 to take passengers on a short, 1500 ft (460 m) trip using some of the original passenger cars from the Centerville & Southwestern Railroad. Originally, plans had been made to rebuild the entire two-mile (3 km) round-trip C&S operation at Phillipsburg as part of the NJ State Railroad and Transportation Museum (Heritage Center), but the needed 35-acre (140,000 m2) parcel of land at Phillipsburg was ceded to a townhouse complex and college annex. Although, the C&S continues to run at Phillipsburg, it's unclear whether a return to full operation at Phillipsburg will be possible.

To this day, vestiges of the Roseland operation still remain intact: the concrete bridge abutments of the 1938 and 1969 bridges over Foulerton Brook remain, although the surrounding area has been regraded and looks nothing like it did when the C&S was in operation; Peachtree Jct. can still be identified, particularly since the lead into the junction is through a rock cut (part of the oval right-of-way is still intact as well); the new bridge on the line opened in 1969 is still used by the business campus that occupies the Becker Farm land, where it passes over the same pond, with "C&S RR" still visible in the concrete abutment of the bridge.

The business campus is situated on what became Becker Farm Road. The Becker family's farm house still stands a short distance down the road from the business campus.