Love railroading? Say it loud!

This site is all about transportation, having featured entries on trucks, taxis, buses and fire apparatus from time to time. Let us make very clear that at JDOW, we also venerate railroading. As a mode of transportation, and a force of economic development, it transformed the American society and landscape like no other innovation since Daimler, Benz, Ford and Olds got busy. Trains are powerful, shake the ground when they roll past, are a hugely efficient (and environmentally sound) means of moving goods and are just plain cool. If it runs on rails, we’re down with it. So is our good friend Robert Kelly, who lives in Monmouth County, New Jersey, and has done a lot to get eyeballs on this site. Today, we’re putting eyeballs on his. Read on.

In addition to good food and great music, New Jersey has a rich railroading heritage, led by the Central Railroad Company of New Jersey, which eventually became a component of the ill-starred Penn Central and later, Conrail. Robert designs and produces T-shirts that celebrate CNJ’s heritage in the Garden State, especially as its concerns his native Jersey City. At his website, Trains to Go, you can peruse quality Gildan shirts with durably printed graphics on New Jersey rail heritage. Mine recalls the Mermaid, the CNJ passenger train that ran from Bayonne to Point Pleasant through 1974. Just the ticket for railfanning at the old Florida East Coast freight station along its hotshot intermodal line through Port Orange.