By: Dennis Symons, Jr.
November 18, 2019
ROBBINSVILLE, NJ–The former Newtown Railroad Depot also known as the Robbinsville Railroad Depot was demolished today. My parents, grandparents and great grandparents that had farms in Robbinsville (former Washington Twp.) and East Windsor Townships at the time they brought vegetables to the rail station to be sold . The potatoes and tomatoes from the farms were sold to Campbell Soup and transported by rail to Camden to be used for soup. The railroad depot operated from 1844 to 1965.
The Camden-Amboy line in this section ran until the early 1990s and then was placed out of service about the time when the polystyrene plant in Windsor closed. The railroad bed was abandoned by Conrail and now Robbinsville Township owns the right of way.
The section north of Windsor was closed in the early 1980s to make way for improvements to the Route 130 and Route 33 intersection in East Windsor. Parts of the old train right of way in Highstown has been turned into a rail trail. A spur of the line was turned into a rail-trail that runs from through Upper Freehold Township from the East Windsor line though New Egypt in Ocean County and called the Union Transportation Trail run by the Monmouth County Park System.
Future plans for Robbinsville for the right of way include a rail trail, possibly linking up with other rail trails in the area.
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