MP 51.2 (M. & E.)
Telegraph Call: W
Waterloo's wood frame station was built in 1854, when
the connection was made with the Sussex Railroad.
A large new water tank was built at Waterloo in 1881.
On September 1, 1890, the boiler of a Delaware, Lackawanna
& Western locomotive named the Morris exploded at 2:05 P.
M. while standing on the upper track at Waterloo, waiting for the Sussex
Railroad passengers on the 1:30 mail train from Newton to board. Though
many people were standing on the platform, no one was seriously injured,
despite the heavy rain of shrapnel. The 400-pound cast-iron sand box
on top of the boiler shot high into the air and came down through the
slate roof of the depot, crashing through one floor to lodge in the
ceiling above Whitfield N. Gray's ticket office. Some pieces thrown
into the air weighed a half ton apiece.
Martin F. Wintermute, of Townley's Photo Gallery in
Newton, happened to be on the Sussex train and had his camera with him.
He got seven or eight excellent views of the wreck.
The turntable (50 footer) was removed soon after 1902,
after the 'Stanhope Cutoff' was inaugurated and the Waterloo leg of
the Sussex
Railroad began to be disused as a connection. About half of the
track remained in place however, extending from the branch north of
Waterloo road, to serve the Mountain Ice Company siding.
The last agent at Waterloo, J.W.A. Lee, was discontinued
in 1922 and the station building was later (after 1940) replaced by
a smaller shelter.
[Note: According to Henry Charlton Beck [See "Frenche's 'Castle'
and Waterloo," Tales and Towns of Northern New Jersey, (Rutgers University
Press: New Brunswick, 1964), p. 99], Willis Montonya moved the old
Waterloo depot to a place near the Netcong Circle in 1939, converting
it to a bungalow. He kept the old station clock and signboard as souvenirs.]
From the 1940s Waterloo was the only regular station
stop on the Lackawanna which did not have a building or shelter roof.
The rude shelter which replaced the station burned down in 1946, the
victim of a grass fire.
New Jersey Transit established a station about a mile
east of the Waterloo Station site to serve the International trade zone.
This station is called 'Mount Olive' and sports a shelter and a ADA
ramp. (Photos in progress.)
Additional Views:
Maps:
Waterloo
station area: 1918 Valuation Map.
Waterloo:
This is a 'combination map' which I created by cutting and pasting together
the "Hackettstown 1898 NE section + Lake Hopatcong 1905 NW section joined
combo of 2 USGS topo maps-- 7.5 minute series" map.
Sources:
