HAPPY THANKGIVING

Thanksgiving at the shore as usual.   A recent nor'easter had uncovered some railroad tracks buried in the sand at Cape May Point, so we shifter our Thanksgiving Day walk on the beach from Avalon to Cape May.    The tracks were associated with a sand mining plant at the point which closed in the 60's or 70's.  Sand was dug along the beach and hauled by rail to the wash plant and rail car loader located about a 1/4 mile east from these tracks.  The plant was effectively the southern end of the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines trackage.  Located in the dunes, a hundred feet or so from the ocean, you couldn't really go any further south in New Jersey.     This looks to be only a section of track and not a continuous line that got buried.  My guess is either a storm buried the track and they just removed the unburied trackage and shifted the line, or they were in the process of moving the track sections to mine another strip of beach and this one got caught in a storm.    It looks narrow gauge in this shot, but the rail has just shifted off the ties.    The section of rail is in a tidal outflow which generates mini-rapids during the outgoing tide.    Who knows how long it will be before it is covered again