Morristown & Erie to open New Jersey transload facility in fall

The Morristown & Erie Railway (M&E) is building a rail-to-truck bulk transloading facility on Troy Hills Road in Whippany, N.J.

Scheduled to open in fall, the 36,000-square-foot facility will help facilitate the seamless transportation of goods and materials in the Hanover area, M&E officials said in a press release. The facility will include indoor warehousing space and a laydown area for storing products on-site, and feature a capacity of 13 rail cars.

The transload terminal is designed to handle virtually all commodities shipped by rail or truck, including plastics, grain and lumber, M&E officials said. A nearby bridge will accommodate bottom-dump unloading of rail cars into a dump truck, which is useful for commodities such as coal, gravel, road salt or cement, they said.

"With the construction of this transload facility, businesses no longer need to be located along the railroad to be railroad customers," M&E officials said. "The Troy Hills Road location will be one of the closest public transload facilities to the ports of Newark and New York."

Earlier this month, the New Jersey short line also announced it's acquiring additional locomotives to enhance the motive-power fleet's reliability, expand operating capacity and better meet customers' needs.