Choo choo... moo moo: the railroad at Becker Farm

A few weeks ago we were knocking around Phillipsburg when we came upon the curious sight of several weathered old train cars sitting along what looked to be an old railroad siding. We'd come upon the property of the Phillipsburg Railroad Historians, who have been working for more than 20 years to establish a rail museum for the state on land that had once been owned by the Central Railroad of New Jersey.

Tiny tracks, as laid out
in Phillipsburg

Among the rolling stock, we noticed a curious thing -- very narrow gauge track, some of which had been laid down, other portions of which were stacked neatly. The whole thing reminded me of the old Lionel track lengths I used in my dad's model railroad layout as a kid, only there were no rail cars of proper size to run on it.

As I later discovered, this was a case where not just a few cars, but an entire railroad is in the process of being relocated, to be enjoyed by a whole new generation. We'd found vestiges of the Centerville and Southwestern Railroad, the line that once operated on Becker Farm in Roseland.

Say "Becker Farm" to many North Jersey residents, and it conjures the image of an office park where scores of Newark businesses settled after leaving the city for suburbia. Close by Route 280, the land is home to law firms, accounting offices and other white collar businesses. You could say that cubicle farms now stand where cows once grazed.

And on that dairy farm, it seems, was a real, operating train, not for transporting freight but for fun. Farmer Eugene Becker apparently was a bit of a rail fan, and starting in 1938, he built his own miniature railroad, fashioning it after the Sussex branch of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad on which his farm's creamery was located. He even nicknamed it "the Fresh Milk Line" and crafted a logo featuring a cow.

From 1940 until 1972, visitors to the farm could enjoy a ride on the C&S RR on weekends from early May until late October. This wasn't just a toy, though: Becker strove for authenticity, running the railroad as reliably as any full-sized operation. According to a brochure published by the family in 1955:

The C & S isn't as wide; nor as long; nor is it narrow gauge: It is a true miniature railroad, and as such, of necessity, it is operated in the same manner, as are its full size brothers. It is thought to be the only miniature railroad in the country that operates on a strict schedule; goes somewhere and comes back - not just around a loop; and runs through natural scenery, such as a trip on a full sized railroad would take you.

Visiting school groups could top off a farm tour with a ride on the railroad, and perhaps also stop by the farm stand for a cool glass of chocolate milk. Though the route was only about 7000 feet long, it had to be a real treat for rail fans, children and adults alike. Hills, curves and signalled intersections were all part of the ride, making real the fantasies of any kid who ever operated a model train set.

Like so many other great things in New Jersey, the C&S met its end with the planning of a highway. The state Department of Transportation took a large part of the Becker Farm in the construction of Route 280, denying the Beckers' request to run the Fresh Milk Line beneath the highway. Forced to reroute the track, the Beckers continued to run the railroad until 1972, when the local government changed the property's zoning from farming to commercial. Another New Jersey farm had perished, and along with it, a unique aspect of the state's railroad heritage.

Eugene Becker reportedly found a home for the railroad at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, but it fell into private hands ten years later, when curators decided it didn't fit the museum's mission. And, of course, we saw vestiges of it in Phillipsburg, where 1500 feet of miniature track has been laid. Unfortunately, plans for a more extensive layout were halted when the land was taken for other uses. Even if the Railroad Historians had been successful in laying a complete track bed, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to recreate the Becker Farm experience, bringing riders through pasture and countryside.

However, I'm told, if you look carefully around the Becker Farm corporate campus, you might find small remnants of the Centerville and Southwestern. A few bridges and cement abutments bear the railroad's insignia, a small reminder for those in the know that the once abundant New Jersey farms were both sources of fresh food and places for memorable experiences.

Visiting Phillipsburg's concrete houses

You might recall that earlier this year, we blindly stumbled around Phillipsburg in the futile effort to find an enclave of concrete houses built for Ingersoll-Rand by Charles Ingersoll (no relation). Never let it be said that I don't eventually find what I'm looking for, even if it takes a compass, pickaxe and night-vision goggles.

The light blue house just behind the pole
is probably closest to the original look of these homes.

Okay, so I got lucky. Not long after that initial visit, I found a chat board discussing the P'burg houses and left a message asking if anyone could provide an address. About 10 days ago, someone responded, telling me that she'd found the enclave near Gino's Market on Congress Avenue. Taking a look at a satellite photo of the neighborhood and comparing it against a street map I'd found in an old book about the houses, I determined that the Gino's neighborhood and the Ingersoll enclave were one and the same. Thus, after our Water Gap excursion on Sunday, Ivan and I found ourselves driving back roads to get to Phillipsburg's Valley View section.

Honestly, I wasn't expecting much. Last year I'd attended a National Park Service presentation on Edison's concrete houses, and the P'burg houses were represented by a dingy photo of a depressing house that appeared to be wrapped in tar paper. What we found when we got there was pretty cheerful by comparison. The Valley View folks have commemorated the Edison connection in a nearby park, and the area is pretty nicely landscaped, overall. While the houses are fitted cheek-on-jowl in 0.1 acre lots, they've been customized by their owners over the years, sporting a variety of colors, brickfaces and even vinyl siding. I have to admit I liked the original stucco the best, but I totally understand the desire to individualize what used to be totally uniform buildings lining both sides of three or four streets. Along the way we saw a larger though still compact commercial building that, no doubt, was originally built to be a community center.

We were fortunate to be invited into one of the houses to take a look around, and true to the billing, these are sturdy structures. They're also very small. As soon as you walk into the door, you're basically in the living room, with a staircase to one side and a shallow sitting room to the other. Immediately behind the living room is a shallow kitchen, and to the other side is an elevated porch that leads to the backyard.

Ducking as not to hit our heads on the ceiling, we climbed the stairs to the second floor to find two small bedrooms just large enough to accommodate a queen-size bed. There's also a shallow front room that maybe could accommodate a small home office. In brief, you'd definitely have to take careful measurements of any furniture you'd buy for the second floor. That, or plan on getting it flat shipped from Ikea, build it in the room you'd use it in, and be prepared to break it apart when you move.

When Edison first envisioned the concrete house, he saw it as a replacement for slum dwellings, an inexpensive alternative that the average worker could buy for just $1,200 (as any real estate agent would tell you, comparing your house with a slum isn't likely to attract many buyers). Ingersoll-Rand saw them as efficiently-constructed housing for laborers working at its nearby factory. Nowadays, I'd venture that they're considered starter housing for young marrieds or singles who want to build equity or would rather have detached housing than a condo. Even as an Edison geek, I'd shy away from the opportunity, though. Just too claustrophobic.


Want to learn more about Edison's many experiments? Check our our stories on his developments in iron ore production, the first town to be fully electrified, his Menlo Park electric railroad, and his West Orange invention factory. You can also learn why his 29 room mansion was a real steal.

Chowing down at Toby's Cup

One of the highlights of the serendipitous Phillipsburg trip was a visit to one of Route 22's quintessential road food establishments: Toby's Cup. It's long been on my list of destinations, but for whatever reason, it took till now (and, I guess, the participation of a road trip partner) to get there.

This is one of those places where it's not so much about the food itself as the experience. In fact, it's the kind of eating establishments that separate the cool people from the snobs on sites like Yelp and Urban Spoon. If you're deriding the place for how disgusting it is, you just don't get it.

The Cup, eastern exposure, as seen from the parking lot.

I wasn't fully prepared for the maneuver you have to take if you're going to get into Toby's tiny parking lot, but having learned how to drive on 22 in Union County, I knew what must be done. On the second pass, I rapidly decelerated from highway speed to about five miles an hour to make the sharp right turn, and be ready to grab the spot closest to the road, all without starting a chain collision behind you. Basically, without experience knowing where the place is, you're going to have to do the second pass, anyway: the whole shack is probably less than 100 square feet in size. Blink and you'll miss it.

Upon our visit, there were already five or six people standing in the cramped customer standing area, waiting for their orders to be called. As Ivan noted, you'd need to go outside to change your mind. Fortunately, we were the only ones who hadn't put in an order, so the counterman took our requests pretty quickly from behind a plywood countertop that also held Tootsie Rolls (2 cents per) and Tastykake fruit pies. There's not a whole lot on the menu; hot dogs, hamburgers, cheese steaks, and, interestingly, a variety of shake options. Soda comes in cans, and chips are available instead of fries. Fair enough.

As we waited for our order, the crowd thinned out and we were able to take a look at the stuff posted on the wall next to the counter window. If you wanted your hair cut, or an old train set, or your driveway plowed in the Lopatcong area, this apparently was the place to find your source.

It didn't take long until we had our bag of food and were back out to the car to eat. The dog wasn't bad -- they fry them in oil much like Rutt's Hut, and that's not especially my favorite way of having them, but it was okay and the skin gave a nice snap when I bit into it. Ivan's hamburger was reminiscent of what I used to get at my grade school cafeteria: vaguely gray meat with a taste you can't quite put your finger on, except to say that it definitely isn't 100 percent beef. Nothing a little ketchup and mustard can't remedy. And, of course, you can't put a price on the experience of reliving your childhood through meat of questionable origin.

Would I go back again?  Yes, if I was in the area. I'd opt for a second dog (at 75 cents a pop, they're a bargain anyway) and check out one of those shakes. Plus, I want to see how many people could possibly fit into that phone booth they call a counter area.

Solid as a rock

The Phillipsburg jaunt deserves a bit more discussion on several fronts, but given that today is Thomas Edison’s birthday, we’ll talk a bit about his link to the area. Oddly enough, it’s because of Edison that we found the Barber School.

You see, among Edison’s 1093 patents are a few related to a proprietary formulation of Portland cement, and the great inventor actually built a cement factory in New Village, New Jersey, just a few miles from P’burg. Originally the machinery had been used in his failed iron ore mining enterprise farther north in Ogdensburg; it proved ideal in the manufacture of cement.

The cement venture wasn’t exactly profitable until the company received a massive order for the construction of the original Yankee Stadium in the early 1920’s. Until then, Edison continually thought of new uses for the product, a few of which are still extant in the Phillipsburg area.

The first is the Concrete Mile, a stretch of NJ Route 57 in Stewartsville. Built in 1912, this was an experiment to see if Portland cement would hold up as a road surface. Indeed it does; this stretch has done quite well, though it’s occasionally patched by crews using more cement.

The second is the concrete house. Few realize it, but Edison had a vision of creating affordable housing well before people like William Levitt. It was simple: erect a pre-fabricated mold that could include all of the outdoor and indoor walls, floors, ceilings and major fixtures. With one pour, fill the mold with Edison Portland cement, and within eight hours, the mold could be taken down and moved to a nearby location to rebuild and pour another house. He planned to sell the molds to developers at cost, and sell them the cement at a profit. The houses were expected to sell for a modest $1200.

Ultimately, Edison didn’t go into concrete houses big time, but others did, including a man named Charles Ingersoll, who built a small enclave of them in Union, NJ and Phillipsburg. Having grown up in Union, I knew that the houses there are close to Route 22 on Ingersoll Terrace, so when I saw an Ingersoll Avenue off of Route 22 in Phillipsburg, I had a good feeling that a historic site was not too far off.

Unfortunately, we found no concrete houses on that street or nearby. All we found was the Barber School and, well, a street that had a name from my family history. Just goes to show, you’ve gotta be open to possibility. Sometimes when you look for one thing, you find another.